robot

Where it comes from

A robot is now a programmable machine that performs tasks automatically. The word entered international use through Karel Čapek’s play R.U.R., whose artificial workers are manufactured to labour for humans. Their name draws on Czech robota, compulsory labour or drudgery. Karel later credited his brother Josef Čapek with suggesting robot for the play. Čapek’s workers were closer to manufactured artificial people than to a modern industrial arm, but their labouring role gave later machines a durable name. A word for compelled work became the worker itself.

How the meaning developed

Robot still carries the work assignment built into its literary name.