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by blacksqr 1694 days ago
The word 'robota' is also related to the German word 'arbeiter'; both suggesting 'laborer' at the most basic level, and sometimes used as a euphemism for outright slave.

Thus the ironic power of the word's use in the play, the same irony that powers the motto 'Arbeit Macht Frei'.

1 comments

Robota was involuntary work for feudal lord during middle ages. The class of people required to do such work were called robotnik (in singular).
"Robotnik" is still used in Polish to mean someone who does manual labor and the like. The pejorative "robol" translates as "prole" as in "proletarian".
When Capek created word robot using robotnik as a base, the term was not used for close to 200 years. Czech translation of robotnik in Polish would be delnik.