plural of auto; short form of automobile or motor vehicles.
Shortened from 'automobile,' which comes from Greek 'autos' (self) and Latin 'mobilis' (movable). The term 'automobile' was coined in the late 1800s, and 'auto' became a casual abbreviation in everyday speech as cars became common.
The prefix 'auto-' literally means 'self,' which is why we have 'automatic' (self-acting), 'autobiography' (self-writing), and 'autocorrect' (self-correcting)—cars were revolutionary partly because they moved by themselves without horses, which is exactly what the name means.
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