Karel Čapek, a Czech writer coined the term "robot", or rather made it popular.
"He introduced and made popular the frequently used international word robot, which first appeared in his play R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots) in 1920. The true inventor of the term robot was Karel's brother Josef Čapek"
"The word robot comes from the word robota meaning "drudgery", "work of a villein" in literary Czech and "work", "labor" in literary Slovak. While Karel Čapek is frequently acknowledged as the originator of the word, he wrote a short letter in reference to the Oxford English Dictionary etymology in which he named his brother, painter and writer Josef Čapek as its true inventor."
"In an article in the Czech Lidové noviny in 1930, he also explains that he originally wanted to call the creature dělňas (a substantive derived from the Czech verb "dělat"- to work, to do). However, Jozef did not like this word and advised Karel, who was writing the play R.U.R. in Trenčianske Teplice in Slovakia, to inspire himself by the local language, in which "work" is expressed by the word robota, also known in the Czech language. The origin of both the Czech and the Slovak word is the Old Church Slavonic rabota "servitude", which in turn comes from the Indo-European root *orbh"
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=1006051228302
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