Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A software program that imitates the behavior of a human, as in participating in chatroom or IRC discussions.
  • noun A software program, such as a spider, that performs automated tasks on the Internet.
  • noun The parasitic larva of a botfly.
  • noun A disease of mammals, especially cattle and horses, caused by infestation of the stomach or intestines with botfly larvae.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The English Board of Trade unit of electrical supply.
  • noun The Anglo-Saxon form (bōt) of boot, a fine, etc.: only in historical use.
  • noun A dialectal form of bat in various senses. Also spelled bott.
  • noun In founding, a clay plug used to close a hole against molten iron.
  • noun An obsolete preterit of bite.
  • noun A name given to the larva or maggot of several species of gadfly when found in the intestines of horses, under the hides of oxen, in the nostrils of sheep, etc.
  • A Middle English form of but.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun (Zoöl.) See bots.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • verb UK, slang To bugger
  • verb Australia, informal To ask for and be given something with the direct intention of exploiting that thing’s usefulness, almost exclusively with cigarettes.
  • noun science fiction, informal A physical robot.
  • noun computing A piece of software designed to complete a minor but repetitive task automatically or on command, especially when operating with the appearance of a (human) user profile or account.
  • noun video games A computer controlled character in a multiplayer video game, such as a first-person shooter.
  • noun The larva of a bot fly, which infests the skin of various mammals, producing warbles, or the nasal passage of sheep, or the stomach of horses.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun botfly larva; typically develops inside the body of a horse or sheep or human

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Short for robot.]

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English, probably of Low German origin.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From bottom.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Shortened from robot.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Possibly a modification of Scottish Gaelic boiteag ("maggot").

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Examples

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  • Short for 'robot', specifically a cyber-robot, almost exclusively used on the internet.

    June 3, 2008