Digital Technology. a software program that can execute commands, reply to messages, or perform routine tasks, as online searches, either automatically or with minimal human intervention (often used in combination): a customer service chatbot to answer product questions.
a social media bot retweeting certain posts;
a customer service chatbot to answer product questions.
Informal. a robot.
botanical.
botanist.
botany.
bottle.
botanical
botany
to scrounge or borrow
to scrounge (from); impose (on)
a scrounger
wanting to scrounge
he's on the bot for a cigarette
the larva of a botfly, which typically develops inside the body of a horse, sheep, or man
any similar larva
informal a mild illness in humans
First recorded in 1985–90; bot 1 def. 2 first recorded in 1965–70; shortening of robot
First recorded in 1425–75; late Middle English; akin to Dutch bot, Frisian dialect botten (plural); further origin unknown
First recorded in 1915–20; perhaps shortening of botfly
A bot is a computer program that imitates human activity online. Bots are especially good at doing repetitive tasks very quickly — much faster than a person possibly could. The word bot is shorthand for robot, and it can describe independently moving machines that perform tasks, like the bot vacuum cleaner that terrifies your cat. Online bots have also been programmed to do boring jobs, like mining data from the web or answering basic customer service questions. Most bots are benign (or even useful), but some are malicious, programmed to spread disinformation, spam, and computer viruses.
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
From his office computer in California, he went to deepseek.com—the same web address his friend in China had used—pasted in the rebuttal, and asked the bot to verify each claim.
From The Wall Street Journal • May 26, 2026
What I am critical of are the people who fail to see the inevitable dehumanization of tech’s 7 billion or so users, whether that be the insecurity of one’s job being replaced by a bot.
From Los Angeles Times • May 21, 2026
He was also seen torching a bot farm which appeared to show multiple phones streaming Kendrick Lamar's Grammy winning diss track, Not Like Us.
From BBC • May 15, 2026
There it was, my recent cancer diagnosis, infiltrating my life again, via a spinach-pushing bot.
From Slate • May 6, 2026
I was working like a ro- bot in high gear.
From "Flush" by Carl Hiaasen
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
