automatic

Pluralautomatics

1. 1
   adjective

   Able to operate on its own, without outside control or human action.

   The factory uses an automatic system that runs without any operator present.

   Modern greenhouses rely on automatic controls to regulate temperature and humidity.

   Similarself-operating

   Oppositemanual

   Note

   The founding sense, and the one the word's Greek ancestry describes most exactly: autómatos meant "self-moving, self-acting," from autós, "self." It is said of machines and systems, such as a clothes washer or a factory line. Its natural opposite is manual, the word for what still needs a hand on it. Self-operating says the same thing more literally.

2. 2
   adjective

   Done out of habit, without any conscious thought or decision.

   Catching a falling glass is an almost automatic reaction.

   After months of practice, his finger movements on the keyboard had become completely automatic.

   Similarinstinctive, thoughtless, perfunctory

   Oppositevoluntary

   Note

   Here the machine has moved inside the person: what runs without a hand on it becomes what runs without a mind on it. It pairs naturally with reaction, and its opposite is voluntary. Instinctive suggests something inborn, perfunctory something done out of mere duty, and thoughtless something done without regard. Automatic says only that no decision was involved: "as natural and automatic as breathing."

3. 3
   nouncountable

   A vehicle whose gears change on their own, or the gear system that does so.

   He traded his manual for an automatic after his knee surgery.

   Most rental companies in the United States offer automatics as standard.

   Oppositemanual, stick, stickshift

   Note

   Car talk turns the adjective into a noun by dropping what it modified: an automatic is an automatic car, or the automatic transmission inside it. Its opposite goes by several names: a manual, a stick, a stick shift, a standard transmission. The pairing is often personal: "I never learned to drive a stick. I can only drive an automatic." The plural is regular: automatics.

4. 4
   adjective

   Required and inevitable, following as a matter of logic, law, or established rule.

   Conviction on a second offense brings an automatic suspension of the driver's license.

   Reaching the qualifying age makes the pension benefit automatic.

   Similarmandatory, compulsory, obligatory, inevitable

   Oppositediscretionary, optional

5. 5
   adjective

   Firing continuously while the trigger is held, until the ammunition runs out.

   On automatic fire, the weapon emptied its magazine in a matter of seconds.

   Many armies restrict automatic rifles to short, controlled bursts.

   Note

   Gun vocabulary splits the word in two, and this is the half that means continuous fire: hold the trigger and the weapon keeps shooting until the ammunition runs out. Writers who need to be unmistakable say fully automatic, as in fully automatic weapons. On a handgun, the pistol meaning describes something quite different: a gun that reloads itself but fires once per pull.

6. 6
   nouncountable

   A self-loading pistol that chambers the next round automatically after each shot fired.

   He preferred a compact automatic to a bulky revolver for everyday carry.

   She ejected the magazine from her automatic and cleared the chamber.

   Similarsemiautomatic

   Note

   The same clipping happened with guns: an automatic pistol became simply an automatic, the noun form of the self-loading pistol meaning. Crime fiction made it familiar. Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express (1934) has "the automatic under his pillow." The word is usually set against the revolver, as when G-men carry .45 automatics while local policemen carry revolvers.

7. 7
   adjective

   Of a handgun, self-loading and firing a single shot per trigger pull, unlike a revolver or a fully automatic machine gun.

   The automatic design feeds a fresh cartridge after each shot without manual cocking.

   She compared an automatic pistol with a revolver before choosing one.

   Similarsemiautomatic, self-loading

   Note

   On a pistol the word promises less than it seems to. The gun loads its next round itself, but each shot still takes a pull of the trigger. The usage is long settled. Arthur Conan Doyle's characters carry an automatic pistol in 1925–26, and Browning's M1911 fires the .45 ACP, the Automatic Colt Pistol. Semi-automatic and self-loading are the precise terms for the same mechanism.

8. 8
   adjective

   Containing one or more finite-state automata as part of its structure.

   An automatic group can be described using a finite collection of state machines.

   Researchers showed the structure was automatic by constructing the required finite-state automata.

   Note

   A term from group theory, used chiefly in the phrase automatic group. It reaches back past the adjective to the noun the word was built on, Latin automatum, "automaton." That noun's modern descendants are the finite-state automata of mathematics and computing. A group earns the label when such machines can describe it, so here the word names a structure rather than a behavior.

9. 9
   adjective

   Added to and removed from the stack on its own as functions are called and return.

   An automatic variable lives only while its function is running.

   Because the counter is automatic, it resets each time the routine is called.

   Note

   A programmer's term for the ordinary local variable, named for the bookkeeping nobody has to do. Memory for it appears on the stack when the function runs and vanishes when the function returns. Robert Clair's Learning Objective-C 2.0 (2012) puts the practical rule plainly: an automatic variable is valid only from its declaration to the end of the function, so nothing should rely on it afterward.

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