Etymology Unknown. Possibly a modification of Scottish Gaelic boiteag (“maggot”), but the word already existed in Middle English, so the reverse direction of borrowing is likely. Possibly from Middle Low German [Term?].
The larva of a botfly, which infests the skin of various mammals, producing warbles, or the nasal passage of sheep, or the stomach of horses.
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c. 1596, William Shakespeare, King Henry IV Part 1, line 2.1.9
› c. 1596, William Shakespeare, King Henry IV…
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Peas and beans are as dank here as a dog, and that is the next way to give poor jades the bots.
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1946, Canadian Journal of Research: Zoological Sciences, National Research Council of Canada, page 76
› 1946, Canadian Journal of Research…
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One deer, later found to be heavily parasitized by bots, suffered severe vomiting attacks during the early spring.
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1984, Adrian Forsyth, Kenneth Miyata, Tropical Nature, page 157
› 1984, Adrian Forsyth, Kenneth Miyata…
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Jerry prepared a glass jar with sterilized sand to act as a nursery for his pulsating bot, but despite his tender ministrations the larva dried out and died before it could encase itself in a pupal sheath.
Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *dʰewbʰ-? Proto-Indo-European *-mḗn Proto-Indo-European *bʰudʰmḗn Proto-Germanic *butmaz Proto-West Germanic *botm Old English botm Middle English botme English bottomclip. English bot From bottom.
Australia, Informal To ask for and be given something with the direct intention of exploiting the thing’s usefulness, almost exclusively with cigarettes.
Can I bot a smoke?
Jonny always bots off me. I just wish he’d get his own pack.
bot
noun
Etymology
Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *dʰewbʰ-? Proto-Indo-European *-mḗn Proto-Indo-European *bʰudʰmḗn Proto-Germanic *butmaz Proto-West Germanic *botm Old English botm Middle English botme English bottomclip. English bot From bottom.
I stared at the bot and recognized her for the first time. She was me.1998, David G. Hartwell, editor, Year's best SF 3, page 130:
As he guided the bot, Andrews reminisced about his younger days in Wyoming, when he had witnessed a mishandled load of wheat puff out a dusty fog.2005, Greg Bear, Quantico, page 71:
1 more example
The bot juddered to a halt, as the whole lower segment of its power arm darkened.2007, Peter F. Hamilton, The Dreaming Void:
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Computing, Engineering, Mathematics, Natural sciences, Physical sciences, Sciences A piece of software designed to perform a task (often a minor but repetitive one) automatically or on command, especially when operating with the appearance of a (human) user profile or account.
The goals of IRC bots vary widely, such as automatically kicking other users off or more nefarious things like spamming other IRC users. In this paper, a free standing IRC bot is presented that monitors an IRC channel for commands from a particular user and responds accordingly.2009, Ryan Farley, Xinyuan Wang, “Roving Bugnet: Distributed Surveillance Threat and Mitigation”, in Dimitris Gritzalis, Javier López, editors, Emerging Challenges for Security, Privacy and Trust: 24th IFIP TC 11 International Information Security Conference, page 42:
He is particularly good at creating web robots, which are also called bots. A bot is software that searches for certain kinds of websites and then automatically does something — good or bad — on each site. Google uses bots to search and index websites.2009, Richard K. Neumann, Legal Reasoning and Legal Writing: Structure, Strategy, and Style, page 91:
2 more examples
Twitter bots can leverage Twitter′s text message support to allow users to accomplish tasks from their cell phones. You could consider Twitter accounts that are simply an automated import of blog′s RSS feed a Twitter bot.2010, Dusty Reagan, Twitter Application Development For Dummies, page 59:
Some bots help refresh your Facebook feed or figure out how to rank Google search results; other bots impersonate humans and carry out devastating DDoS attacks. […] Overall, bots—good and bad—are responsible for 52 percent of web traffic, according to a new report by the security firm Imperva, which issues an annual assessment of bot activity online.2017 January 31, Adrienne LaFrance, “The Internet Is Mostly Bots”, in The Atlantic, archived from the original on 04 Feb 2023:
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Video games A computer-controlled character in a video game, especially a multiplayer one.
Next, you are placed in the world of RuneScape, which is similar to our own, with trees, grass, buildings, animals, and of course, people. In RuneScapes shops and banks there are bots' (computer-controlled players).2004, Daniel Sulpizi, “Rally Your Troops for RuneScape2”, in The Toronto Star:
Most games offer both single player mode, in which a player competes against computer rivals—bots—and a multiplayer mode, which is a contest among people only.2012, Philip Hingston, Believable Bots: Can Computers Play Like People?, Springer Science & Business Media, →ISBN, page 232:
"That lobby was bronze negative 10!" Aydan joked on-stream, noting how easy it felt for his squad. "We got blessed with the lobby. It was such a bot lobby."2021 March 6, Aydan Conrad (quoted), Wesley Yin-Poole, “Call of Duty: Warzone squad sets new world record with an astonishing 162 kills in a single game”, in Eurogamer:
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Internet, Derogatory, Often A person with no ability to think for themselves; (by extension) an unintelligent or contemptible person.
The meaning of the word "bot" on Twitter/X seems to have shifted over time, with people originally using it to flag automated accounts, but now employing it to insult people they disagree with[.][2024 June 10, Chris Stokel-Walker, “The word ‘bot’ is increasingly being used as an insult on social media”, in New Scientist, →ISSN, retrieved 10 Jun 2024: