nanobot

[ nan-uh-bot ]

noun

1. a machine or robot built on the nanoscale, still in the research-and-development stage, with potential applications in medicine and industry.
2. a machine or robot that can manipulate nanoscale objects with great precision.

Word History and Origins

Origin of nanobot¹

First recorded in 1990–95; nano- + (ro)bot

Example Sentences

Noah noted that if people do want to wax nostalgic, all they have to do is wait 20 years until everyone gets used to the name and then “they change that name to Nanobot X Arena or whatever.”

From Los Angeles Times

His weapon of choice is a nanobot bioweapon — which plays a bit scarier post-COVID than it might have initially — as he works from an island somewhere in the North Atlantic full of exotic poison plants first cultivated by his father.

From Los Angeles Times

A 2006 third-person shooter game called Re-Mission featured a player traveling through a human body as a nanobot destroying cancer cells.

From Washington Post

But the confederacy of Jokers collapsed during a botched heist at the Gotham Jewel Depository, leading to one of the most shocking incidents of Joker-on-Joker violence in the history of Gotham City: The giant nanobot Joker constructed a giant nanobot catapult, which he used to fling the normal-sized Joker across Gotham at a speed that would surely have been fatal if not for the intervention of the Batman:

From Slate

Man Booker International prize nominee Mazen Maarouf’s story, meanwhile, is set in the aftermath of a nanobot attack in 2037, narrated by the last Palestinian left alive, his body so affected by radiation that he is kept in a glass box, but who cannot be killed.

From The Guardian