Robotics

How to spell robotics

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce robotics

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does robotics mean?

1. nounThe branch of technology concerned with the design, construction, and operation of robots.

Robotics in a sentence

• She studied robotics at university before joining a car factory.

• Advances in robotics have changed how warehouses sort packages.

Where does robotics come from?

Language of origin: Other

This word traces back to the Czech word robota, which literally meant forced labour or drudgery, the kind of work done by serfs. The noun robot was coined for the 1920 play R.U.R. by the Czech writer Karel Capek, who credited his brother Josef with suggesting it for the artificial workers in the story. The word spread quickly into English in the early 1920s as a name for any human-like machine built to labour. The branch noun robotics was then coined by the science fiction author Isaac Asimov, who used it in a 1941 story and assumed it was already standard, modelling it on words like physics and mechanics. The -ics ending, common to names for fields of study, is why the spelling keeps that final s even though it behaves as a singular subject; remembering the single t and single b of the underlying robot keeps the whole word steady.

How the word is built

• robot (from Czech robota: forced labour)
• -ics (noun suffix naming a field of study or activity)