The interesting origins of a ubiquitous word
Here’s a question for you: when did the word ‘robot’ first enter the English language? And where did it come from? There are a few misconceptions about the origins and various meanings of the term ‘robot’, so the issue is worth examining a little more closely. The most common definition of ‘robot’ is the one provided by the Oxford English Dictionary: ‘An intelligent artificial being typically made of metal and resembling in some way a human or other animal.’ But the story of how the word came to have this meaning is a curious one. Its origin, indeed, takes us back to nineteenth-century Europe.