Newsgroups: comp.robotics
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From: tim@iss.nus.sg (Tim Poston)
Subject: Re: A gaggle of geese, a pride of lions, a pack of wolves...
Message-ID: <1993Jan21.034722.27132@nuscc.nus.sg>
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Date: Thu, 21 Jan 1993 03:47:22 GMT
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jl3j+@andrew.cmu.edu (John Robert Leavitt) writes:
: >Isn't "robot" from the Slavic root for "worker".
: 
: Actually, I believe it is from the Russian word "rabotnik" == worker,
Nope, it's from the Czech; a book `RUR' by Karel \v{C}apek,
title short for "Rustum's Universal Robots" --- I don't know
the exact Czech form.  The Russian, by the way, is spelled
with a Russian o as first vowel, only pronounced `a' because
it's before the stress.  OK to transliterate as `rabotnik',
I suppose, but only if you write the Russian president's given
name as `Baris' --- the same shift happens there.

Tim

