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Avatar

/a-və-ˌtär/

[CMU, Tektronix]

n. Syn. root, superuser. There are quite a few UNIX machines on which the name of the superuser account is 'avatar' rather than 'root'. This quirk was originated by a CMU hacker who disliked the term 'superuser', and was propagated through an ex-CMU hacker at Tektronix.