Definition of "robot"

“I say again, down with the robot!—he is a dog who yields it!”

1849, Littell's Living Age, volume 23, page 309

Although the robot varied from region to region, it was rarely less than burdensome.

2007, Tim Blanning, The Pursuit of Glory, Penguin, published 2008, page 159

Domain: In fact, he rejected man and made the Robot. My dear Miss Glory, the Robots are not people. Mechanically they are more perfect than we are, they have an enormously developed intelligence, but they have no soul.

1923, Karel Čapek, translated by Paul Selver, R.U.R., page 13

The robots in Dick's novel, loosely adapted by Ridley Scott into the film Blade Runner, were so similar to humans that when they went rogue, trained bounty hunters were called in to perform psychological tests to see whether suspected androids lacked human empathy.

2010 January 26, Tom Chivers, Iain McDiarmid, The Telegraph

It's painfully slow and complex work which has never been attempted before in these conditions: the small box-shaped robots, equipped with two claws, are operating in almost freezing water 5,000ft below the surface, in pitch black and strong currents.

2010 May 16, Tim Webb, The Guardian

Yet surely he was a humorless robot of a man, spewing forth lonely and bitter critiques of all those lesser mortals with whom he could not identify.

2006, Murray N. Rothbard, Making Economic Sense, page xiv

One anonymous message addressed to "fellow robots" hoped readers would have "an enjoyable Elliot Rodger day"—a reference to the shooter who killed six near a Santa Barbara university last year.

2015 October 1, David Kravets, “Ominous messages left on 4chan day before Oregon college killings [Updated]”, in Ars Technica‎, archived from the original on 2022-12-06

Posters on the board are locked in an ongoing debate about who can be one of them— a "robot." Can white guys be robots, despite their privilege? Can black guys? Women love them! It goes on and on. Only one rule really seems to be agreed upon: "If you have no friends and no gf you are a robot."

2015 October 3, Jay Hathaway, “How 4chan Trolled Two of Its Friends by Framing Them for the Oregon Mass Shooting”, in Gawker‎, archived from the original on 2022-11-20

It continued: "On October 5, 2015 at 1:00 p.m. CT, a fellow robot will take up arms against a university near Philadelphia. His cries will be heard, his victims will cower in fear, and the strength of the Union will decay a little more."

2015 October 5, Justin Wm. Moyer, anonymous quotee, “Philadelphia colleges on alert after 4chan post threatens violence Monday”, in The Washington Post‎, Washington, D.C.: The Washington Post Company, archived from the original on 2016-06-24

As /r9k/ robots posted and reposted Pepes to playfully mock their status as grotesque outsiders whose very visage was disturbing to "normies," they ushered in a renaissance of frogs that soon appealed to all the netizens who every year had a little more in common with withdrawn, internet-soaked hikikomori.

2019, Dale Beran, It Came from Something Awful: How a Toxic Troll Army Accidentally Memed Donald Trump into Office, New York, N.Y.: All Points Books