automatic (atomatik)

[ self-moving (see automaton ), +-ic.] 1. Acting as an automaton. (a) Having the power of self motion; self-acting: as, automatic machinery. (b) Done unconsciously or from force of habit; mechanical, as opposed to voluntary. 2. Conducted or carried on by self-acting machinery. It is in our modern cotton and flax mills that automatic operations are displayed to most advantage. Ure, Dict., I. 274. 3. In physiol.: (a) Not voluntary; not under the control of, or not effected by, volition: said of certain muscular actions. Let me briefly notice some of our other automatic actions. In the act of swallowing, which properly begins at the back of the throat, the "swallow" lays hold of the food or the drink brought to it by the muscles of the mouth and carries this down into the stomach. We are quite unconscious of its pa age thither unle we have taken a larger morsel or something hotter or colder than ordinary. This is an instance of purely automatic action. W. B. Carpenter. In animals, too, to a far greater extent than in plants, is the automatic activity which always resides in protoplasm itself transmitted by the mechanism of the organization to different parts of the organism or to the whole of it. L. F. Ward, Dynam. Sociol., I. 353. (b) Not reflex: said, for example, of certain activities of ganglion-cells.-Automatic brake. See brake.- Automatic coupling. See coupling. - Automatic mallet. Same as dental hammer (which see, under hammer ). - Automatic theory. Same as automa tism, 2. automatical (a-to-mat'i-kal), a. 1. Same as automatic.-2. Having reference to or connected with automatic things. automatically (a-to-mat'i-kal-i), adv. 1. In an automatic manner; mechanically; unconsciously. automatous He went on rowing idly, half automatically . George Eliot , Mill on the Flo , vi. 13. We know that a frequently repeated act of muscular skill finally comes to be done almost automatically and with little intervention of consciousne . Science, IV. 473. 2. By automatic means; by its own action. An automatically working machine. Sci. Amer., N. S., LV. 55. Automatically keeping its temperature uniform. Jour . Franklin Inst ., CXXI., Supp. 7.