Mysteries of vernacular: Robot - Jessica Oreck and Rachael Teel

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In 1920, Czech writer Karel Čapek wrote a play about human-like machines, thereby inventing the term robot from the Central European word for forced labor. Jessica Oreck and Rachael Teel explain how the science fiction staple earned its name.

Lesson by Jessica Oreck and Rachael Teel, animation by Jessica Oreck.

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!