Word of the day: avatar

I've become accustomed to the word "avatar" as that small graphic that is associated with a user account. Like the chick I use for my Blogger i.d., for instance. When you go to a fan site (like to the Mutts comic strip or DC Comics, for example), in addition to the old desktop wallpapers and whatnot, they now have downloadable avatars, or icons. So I learned what the word meant in this context. It sounded familiar, but it certainly wasn't a word in my active vocabulary.

So I finally looked it up and I see the primary definition comes from Hindu religion and that an avatar is "an incarnation of a god."

Cool.

I knew it made me seem more important, somehow.