Mysteries of vernacular: Robot - Jessica Oreck and Rachael Teel
Mysteries of vernacular:
Robot,
a machine capable of carrying out
a programmable series of actions.
The origin of the word robot
dates back more than a thousand years
to the era of serfdom in central Europe
when servitude was the currency for rent.
In those days,
the Old Church Slavonic word rabota
described the forced labor of the people.
A slight adjustment of spelling,
and rabota became the Czech robota,
which, in addition to defining the toil of the serfs,
was also used figuratively
to describe any kind of hard work or drudgery.
In 1920, Czech writer Karel Capek published
a science fiction play called "R.U.R.",
short for "Rossum's Universal Robots."
The story featured automated machines
with distinctly human features
that, until they revolt,
catered to the whims of the people of Earth.
Capek originally considered
calling these hard-working machines labori
from the Latin word for labor,
but he worried it sounded a bit too scholarly.
He opted, instead, to emphasize their enslaved state
by naming them roboti,
or robot in English.
"R.U.R." was wildly successful,
and when it was translated into English in 1923,
the word robot was enthusiastically embraced.
Though most of today's robots look
quite different than Capek imagined,
they've become just as popular as he predicted.
Unlike in "R.U.R.", though,
our robots haven't risen up against us,
and here's hoping it stays that way!
