robotic
Americanadjective
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in the manner of a robot; mechanical; lacking human intelligence or emotion.
He’s so constant and efficient that he looks robotic on the ice, and his scores for artistic performance suffer.
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performed by a robot without active guidance from a human operator.
Over the course of several robotic missions, NASA gathered information about the surface of Mars and its atmosphere.
Etymology
Origin of robotic
First recorded in 1925–30; robot ( def. ) + -ic ( def. )
Explanation
Something is robotic if it moves or behaves like a machine. If you express no emotion and do things in an automatic-seeming way, your friends might say you're robotic. The adjective robotic can describe something related to the use of robots, like a robotic technique for dismantling a bomb or a robotic tool for surgery. Often, it's used to describe a person who reminds you of a robot: "She gets good grades, but she's so robotic! All she does is work — never has any fun!" Science fiction writer Isaac Asimov is credited with the first use of robotic in 1941.
Vocabulary lists containing robotic
Vocabulary from "There Will Never Be an Age of Artificial Intimacy," by Sherry Turkle
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Phase I of NASA's Moon Base architecture plan, which is underway now through 2029, calls for more than twenty robotic landings.
From Science Daily ● Aug. 11, 2026
A robotic voice tells me to stay still and close my eyes as I stand in a huge curved scanner while classical music plays in the background.
From BBC ● Aug. 8, 2026
No longer just a producer of low-value consumer goods, China is now exporting more of the higher-value intermediate and capital goods that underpin global manufacturing, such as chips, precision machinery and robotic arms.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 7, 2026
But some young people have told the BBC the experience of applying for hundreds of jobs and never hearing back is "robotic and brutal".
From BBC ● Jul. 30, 2026
The robotic female voice clicks on again: the library will close in five minutes.
From "The Sea in Winter" by Christine Day
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.
