1. An image representing a USer in a multi-USer virtual reality (or VR-like, in the case of Palace) space. 2. (CMU, Tektronix) root, superUSer. There are quite a few Unix computers 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. [Jargon File] (1997-09-14)