Meaning
A machine, especially one programmable by computer, that carries out actions autonomously or semi-autonomously and often replaces a human worker; by extension, a person who acts mechanically or without feeling. The sense has drifted from the play's artificially grown organic laborers to mechanical devices, and the word is now fully neutral technical vocabulary. Neutral technical vocabulary; the extended sense of a dehumanized, unfeeling person can be insulting. Regional use: General English (from Czech, coined in Prague by Josef and Karel Capek).
Origin
Czech writer Karel Capek used the word in his 1920 play R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots), published in Prague and first staged there in January 1921, but he publicly credited his brother Josef as the word's true inventor, saying Josef had proposed it while Karel searched for a name for his artificial workers. It comes from Czech robota, compulsory forced labor or drudgery, related to rab 'slave', from the Indo-European root that also yields 'orphan' and German Arbeit. The Theatre Guild production opened in New York on October 9, 1922, an English translation followed in 1923, and by 1923 the play had been translated into thirty languages, carrying 'robot' into English and displacing older terms such as automaton and android.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- bot
- robotic
- robotically
- robots
Usage Examples
- The warehouse uses robots to move pallets between the loading docks.
- After the third double shift he moved like a robot, scanning each item without really seeing it.
- Engineers programmed the robot to inspect the turbine blades without shutting the plant down.