Revised as of
26 Oct 2022
I know. How could anyone possibly confuse bot with bought?
I’d love to buy a bot. A bought bot. It has a certain ring. It leads to fantasies of bots cleaning the house, doing the dishes. Skip all that factory assembly stuff. I want a bot that will do all the household chores. Take out the garbage.
These services can be bought whether it’s through inveigling hubby into taking out the garbage or giving the kids chores to, ahem, teach them character, or hiring a cleaning lady, gardener, snow removal, etc.
But a bot doesn’t need new clothes, doesn’t need to be fed other than a few cans of oil. They don’t have homework that has to be done yesterday. Nor do they need cupcakes for school. That morning.
No inveigling either. Just tell ’em: take out the garbage, mow the lawn, shovel the driveway. Bliss.
I want me a bought bot!
Word Confusions . . .
. . . started as my way of dealing with a professional frustration with properly spelled words that were out of context in manuscripts I was editing as well as books I was reviewing. It evolved into a sharing of information with y’all. I’m hoping you’ll share with us words that have been a bête noire for you from either end. Consider sharing this Word Confusion with friends by tweeting it.
| Bot | Bought |
|---|---|
Et l’Homme créa le robot by Guilhem Vellut from Tokyo, Japan, is under the CC BY 2.0 license, via Wikimedia Commons. — Bots from Metropolis (1927) and I (2004) displayed during the exhibition at the Musée des Arts et Métiers in Paris. |
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Bought and Paid For, a comedy movie from the 1920s by Paramount Pictures, is in the public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. |
| Part of Grammar: | |
| Combination Form 1; Noun 2, 3 Plural for the noun: bots |
Morpheme: buy
Verb, intransitive & transitive Plural for the noun: buys Third person present verb: buys |
| Combination Form: Used to form nouns denoting a computer program or robot with a very specific function 1 Noun:
The larva of the botfly, which is an internal parasite of animals 3 |
Verb, intransitive: Obtain in exchange for payment
[Informal] Accept the truth of Verb, transitive:
[Informal] Accept the truth of Bought it
|
| Examples: | |
| Combination Form: The Bionic Woman was considered a fembot because she was, not only a woman, but a collection of mechanical and electrical parts. The overly gorgeous women from Austin Powers are all representative of fembots, robots designed to seduce the main character with their beauty. An adbot, a.k.a., spybot, is spyware that gathers up information about a computer user’s online actions to more directly target them with products they think the user will buy. Noun: “An Internet bot, also known as web robot, WWW robot or simply bot, is a software application that runs automated tasks over the Internet. Typically, bots perform tasks that are both simple and structurally repetitive, at a much higher rate than would be possible for a human alone (Wikipedia).” The bot lives typically in the stomach, finally passing through the host’s dung and pupating on the ground. |
Verb, intransitive: Dr. Welsh hadn’t bought into the entertainment company. Stephanie Plum had bought lingerie for a small company in New Jersey. I had bought into a stereotype. Verb, transitive: He had bought up the farm next door. He bought me a new dress. Maude bought the partners out. Here was a man who could not be bought. I bought off the investigators. He hadn’t bought happiness, just a house and a fancy car. Greatness is dearly bought. I hadn’t bought the claim that the ends justify the means. His friends had bought it in the jungle. He bought us some time when he ran out there. |
| History of the Word: | |
|
Old English bycgan is of Germanic origin. |
C’mon, get it out of your system, bitch, whine, moan . . . which words are your pet peeves? Also, please note that I try to be as accurate as I can, but mistakes happen or I miss something. Email me if you find errors, so I can fix them . . . and we’ll all benefit!
Satisfy your curiosity about other Word Confusions on its homepage or more generally explore the index of self-editing posts. You may also want to explore Book Layout & Formatting Ideas, Formatting Tips, Grammar Explanations, Linguistics, Publishing Tips, the Properly Punctuated, Writing Ideas and Resources, and Working Your Website.
Resources for Bot versus Bought
Apple Dictionary.com
Pinterest Photo Credits
“Wind-up Toy Robots” Invade Taubman North Lobby (cropped and a shadow added) was part of an exhibit “Wind-Up Toy Robots from the Elaine Reed Collection” created and photographed by therapeutic artist Elaine Reed. The exhibit had been in the Taubman Center at the University of Michigan and had been sponsored by Gifts of Art. Hungarian Antique Three-column Full-keyboard Cash Register, 1902, is Takkk’s own work (background removed and “BOUGHT” added) under the CC BY-SA 3.0 or GFDL license, via Wikimedia Commons.
