Shakespeare wasn’t the only playwright to coin words that are now part of our everyday language!

Did you know that robot also comes to us from a play? Karel Capek, a Czech playwright, wrote the popular play in the 1920s translated into English as “Rossum’s Universal Robots” or “R.U.R.” that was a raving success in New York. In the play, he has “mechanical persons” called robotniks (shortened to robot in English), which means, in Czech, “forced laborers.” Robotnik in turn comes from robota, which means “compulsory service, drudgery,” which takes its own root from robotiti, “to work, to drudge.”

The play debuted in New York in 1922, and by 1923, robot was considered an English word meaning “mechanical person.” According to the playwright, it was actually his brother Josef who came up with the word and used it first in a short story–the two often collaborated.

Word Nerds Merch!