Robot
Pronunciation
- enPR: rÅ′bÅt
- UK IPA: /ˈɹəʊbɒt/
- US IPA: /ˈɹoʊbɑt/
- (rare, antiquated) enPR: rÅ′bÉ™t, IPA: /ˈɹoÊŠbÉ™t/
Origin
From Czech robot, from robota ("drudgery, servitude"). Coined in the 1921 science-fiction play by Karel ÄŒapek after having been suggested to him by his brother Josef http://ui.fpf.slu.cz/persons/Kelemen/articles/HorKelALIFEIXDef.pdf, and taken into the English translation without change.
Full definition of robot
Noun
robot
(plural robots)- A machine built to carry out some complex task or group of tasks, especially one which can be programmed.
- 2010, Tim Webb, The Guardian, 16 May 2010:It's painfully slow and complex work which has never been attempted before in these conditions: the small box-shaped robots, equipped with two claws, are operating in almost freezing water 5,000ft below the surface, in pitch black and strong currents.
- (chiefly science fiction) An intelligent mechanical being designed to look like a human or other creature, and usually made from metal.
- 2010, Tom Chivers and Iain McDiarmid, The Telegraph, 26 Jan 2010:The robots in Dick's novel, loosely adapted by Ridley Scott into the film Blade Runner, were so similar to humans that when they went rogue, trained bounty hunters were called in to perform psychological tests to see whether suspected androids lacked human empathy.
- (figuratively) A person who does not seem to have any emotions.
- Murray N. Rothbard, Making Economic Sense (page xiv)Yet surely he was a humorless robot of a man, spewing forth lonely and bitter critiques of all those lesser mortals with whom he could not identify.
- (South Africa) A traffic light (from earlier robot policeman).
- (surveying) A theodolite which follows the movements of a prism and can be used by a one-man crew.
- A style of dance popular in disco whereby the dancer impersonates the movement of a robot