Robot

How to spell robot

5 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce robot

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does robot mean?

1. nounA machine, often programmable, that can carry out tasks automatically or in place of a human.

Robot in a sentence

• The factory installed a robot to weld the car panels.

• A small robot vacuums the living room while she is at work.

Where does robot come from?

Language of origin: Other

This word entered English remarkably recently and from an unexpected source: the Czech word robota, meaning forced labour, servitude, or drudgery, the kind of toil once demanded of peasants. It was introduced to the world in 1920 through the play R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots) by the Czech writer Karel Capek, in which artificial workers are manufactured to serve humans. Capek often credited his brother Josef with suggesting the term, deriving it from robota rather than the heavier-sounding word Capek had first considered. Within a few years the play was translated and staged across Europe and America, and the word spread rapidly into English in the 1920s. Its meaning quickly broadened from these fictional manufactured servants to the mechanical and automated machines we know today. Because the word arrived whole and is spelled exactly as it sounds, it carries no hidden trap, which makes it one of the easier modern borrowings to write.

How the word is built

• robot (whole word from Czech robota: forced labour, drudgery)