Origin Story
The word robot was first used in the 1920 play R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots) by the Czech writer Karel Capek. Capek wanted a name for the artificial humans who labor for mankind, and originally considered labori, drawn from the Latin labor. But his brother Josef Capek suggested robot, from the Czech robota ("forced labor, serfdom"). Robota derives from the Slavic rabota ("work") and, in Czech history, meant the corvee labor owed by serfs. In the play, the robots ultimately rise up against humanity — a vision that foresaw the anxieties of the AI age a full century early. Robot was promptly borrowed into languages around the world and became a word shared by all of humankind.
Capek's robots were not metal machines but artificial humans made of organic matter. The image of the metallic robot came later, from film and science fiction. Capek himself credited the coinage of the word robot to his brother Josef.
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Oxford English Dictionaryrobot: from Czech, from robota "forced labor, drudgery" — coined by Karel Capek in his play R.U.R. (1920), suggested by his brother Josef
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Online Etymology Dictionaryrobot (n.): 1923 in English, from Czech robotnik "slave," from robota "forced labor, compulsory service" — from the 1920 play R.U.R. by Karel Capek
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Encyclopaedia BritannicaKarel Capek's R.U.R. premiered in Prague in 1921 and introduced "robot" to the world; the word comes from Czech robota, meaning "servitude"
Word Evolution
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Words from the Same Root
Memory Hook
robot = robota ("forced labor"). "A robot was originally a slave forced to toil!" And to this day, robots work without rest.
""The imaginary slave of a Czech writer a century ago has become real, in our factories and our homes.""
