Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adjective Of, relating to, or controlled by the autonomic nervous system.
  • adjective Occurring involuntarily; automatic.
  • adjective Resulting from internal stimuli; spontaneous.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Relating to autonomy; having the power of self-government; autonomous; self-governing; independent.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adjective Having the power of self-government; autonomous.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective Acting or occurring involuntarily, without conscious control.
  • adjective Pertaining to the autonomic nervous system.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • adjective relating to or controlled by the autonomic nervous system

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

autonomy +‎ -ic

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Examples

  • You know it ` s easy to blame the mother and father and to try to draw a direct link, but researchers showing that if someone has anti-social or sociopathic personality, that sometimes they have what we call autonomic under arousal, meaning they don ` t have as much anxiety as you and I do about getting into trouble.

    CNN Transcript Aug 21, 2008 2008

  • This is because the brain, of course, which controls the emotions like anxiety is also linked to the heart through what we call the autonomic nervous system.

    CNN Transcript Jun 24, 2006 2006

  • I had to confront my parents today; they wouldn’t use the term autonomic dysfunction or Shy-Dragers.

    Archive 2007-11-01 Elizabeth McClung 2007

  • I had to confront my parents today; they wouldn’t use the term autonomic dysfunction or Shy-Dragers.

    Things happening for no reason at all; Do you want to dance with me? Elizabeth McClung 2007

  • Let's deconstruct that in autonomic terms: the windmill adapted its state to the new environment, using the external change as both the power and the alignment for the internal change.

    Boing Boing: May 11, 2003 - May 17, 2003 Archives 2003

  • There’s a chance you’d experience what we call autonomic hyperreflexia, uncontrolled reflex motion.

    Eye of the Storm V.C. Andrews 2001

  • There’s a chance you’d experience what we call autonomic hyperreflexia, uncontrolled reflex motion.

    Eye of the Storm V.C. Andrews 2001

  • In this portion of the nervous system, then, there is a kind of self-government and it is therefore known as the autonomic nervous system.

    Physiology or Medicine 1936 - Presentation Speech 1965

  • It is for this reason called the autonomic nervous system.

    The Human Brain Asimov, Isaac 1963

  • (It was formerly called the sympathetic nervous system, but this term is now limited to one part of this system, and the term autonomic to another part, although some writers still use the term sympathetic for the whole, and others [the English] the term autonomic for the whole.)

    The Foundations of Personality 1921

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