bot

Etymology 1

Possibly a modification of Scottish Gaelic boiteag (“maggot”).

noun

1. 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.
   One deer, later found to be heavily parasitized by bots, suffered severe vomiting attacks during the early spring. 1946, Canadian Journal of Research: Zoological Sciences, National Research Council of Canada, page 76
   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. 1984, Adrian Forsyth, Kenneth Miyata, Tropical Nature, page 157

Etymology 2

From bottom.

verb

1. (Britain, slang) To bugger.
2. (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.

Etymology 3

Clipping of robot.

noun

1. (science fiction, informal) A physical robot.
   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
   The bot juddered to a halt, as the whole lower segment of its power arm darkened. 2007, Peter F. Hamilton, The Dreaming Void
2. (computing) A piece of software designed to perform a minor but repetitive task 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
   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
   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. 2017-01-31, Adrienne LaFrance, “The Internet Is Mostly Bots”, in The Atlantic, retrieved 2021-09-01
3. (video games) A computer-controlled character in a video game, especially a multiplayer one.
   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, page 232
4. (video games, slang, derogatory) A supremely unskilled player.
   "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." 2021-03-06, 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
5. (Internet slang, figurative) A person with no ability to think for themselves.

verb

1. (video games) To use a bot, or automated program.
   Players caught botting will be banned from the server.