PERMANENT SOURCE RECORD
ALL SOURCES ↗BIBLIOGRAPHIC IDENTITYmw-robot
SOURCE
RECORD.
One work. Every claim that depends on it. No citation without a consequence you can inspect.
11 PUBLIC LINKS INTO THE GRAPH.
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historical dictionarymw-robot
Robot — Word History
- AUTHOR / EDITOR
- Merriam-Webster Editors
- YEAR
- 2026
- PUBLISHER
- Merriam-Webster
- DOI
- Not recorded
- SOURCE TYPE
- historical dictionary
- EXTERNAL RECORD
- OPEN ORIGINAL ↗
011
CONTRARIAN TRUTH CLAIMS
RANKED REVEALS THAT CITE THIS SOURCE
RANK 03GRADE Asupports
Robot named forced labor before machinery.
The machine word begins in Czech robota: compulsory labor, corvée, or drudgery.
robota
robota “forced labor” → R.U.R. artificial workers → robot
Did You Know; Word HistoryDocuments robota as forced labor and the Čapek play coinage.
robot dossier ↗truth record ↗98UNVEILING
022
SCHOLARLY DISAGREEMENT
DISPUTE POSITIONS THAT CITE THIS SOURCE
resolvedsupportsestablished
Did Karel Čapek personally invent robot?
Karel introduced and popularized it in R.U.R., but Merriam-Webster reports that his brother Josef suggested the name from robota.
Did You Know and Word HistoryCredits Josef Čapek with suggesting robot and distinguishes that act from Karel Čapek’s play.
resolvedsupportsprobable
Does robot literally mean orphan?
No. Robot descends immediately from Czech compulsory labor. Orphan belongs to a remote comparative family around transferred status, dependency, and bereavement; a distant root relationship is not a modern definition.
Did You Know and Word HistoryDocuments robota as forced labor rather than orphan as the immediate meaning.
031
CANONICAL RELATIONSHIP CLAIMS
EDGES THAT CITE THIS SOURCE
EDGE 97supportsestablished
robot → robota
Present-Day English → Czech · creative coinage
- SOUND
- Josef Čapek suggested robot from Czech robota; English received the coined form through Karel Čapek's R.U.R. and its translation.
- MEANING
- Compulsory human labor was reassigned to artificial workers, then generalized to automatic machines.
- SCHOLAR / EDITOR
- Merriam-Webster editors
Did You Know and Word HistoryJosef Čapek suggestion, robota, 1920 play, and 1922 English record.
042
LEXICAL ATTESTATIONS
WITNESSES REPORTED BY THIS SOURCE
robotSOURCE-REPORTED
robota
Source-reported coinage context in R.U.R.
OPEN WITNESS 30 ↗robotSOURCE-REPORTED
robot
English lexicographic first-use record
OPEN WITNESS 29 ↗052
COMPARATIVE EVIDENCE
COGNATES, DESCENDANTS, AND RELATIVES
063
GEOGRAPHIC AND TEMPORAL CLAIMS
JOURNEY STAGES THAT CITE THIS SOURCE
stage 2supports
Prague
Reports the 1920 Czech play R.U.R., Karel Čapek’s use of robot, Josef Čapek’s naming suggestion, and Czech robota “forced labor” as the immediate lexical source.
Word History: Czech R.U.R. and naming note · regionalstage 3supports
English-language R.U.R. translation and print
Reports that robot entered English through translation of R.U.R. and gives 1922 as the first-known-use horizon.
Word History: English translation and First Known Use · regionalstage 4supports
English-language robot senses
Documents machine, automatic-mechanism, and machinelike-person senses while dating only the core English word to the 1922 first-known-use horizon.
Current definitions and Word History: First Known Use · broad070
NON-GENEALOGICAL CONNECTIONS
HISTORICAL CONTEXT, KEPT SEPARATE
No non-genealogical context link currently cites this source.
081
WORD-FAMILY REUSE
DOSSIERS THAT DEPEND ON THIS SOURCE
1 entry-scoped citations map reviewed dossier paths onto the canonical claims above.