Meanings
plural robocops
- literatureA cyborg police officer.
Robocops, touted by state media as a way of beefing up Shenzhen’s security apparatus, are nowhere to be seen.
2025 April 21, Amy Hawkins, “Humanoid workers and surveillance buggies: ‘embodied AI’ is reshaping daily life in China”, in The Guardian, →ISSN2 more examples
1990, Library and Information Technology Association (U.S.). National Conference, Michael Gorman, Convergence: Proceedings of the Second National Conference... As the World Wars were succeeded by the Korean War, which melded into the Vietnam War, science fiction pictured numerous dystopias controlled by means of ever-watchful computer and robocops.
Opposite of natural monsters there are technological monsters such as terminators, cyborgs, and robocops—all of which undermine dichotomies between the artificial and the organic, the prosthetic and the natural.
2010, Tyson E. Lewis, Richard Kahn, Education Out of Bounds, page 1
Origin
From robo- + cop, after the film RoboCop (1987).
Full word history & related roots →Cite this entry
robocop. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 2, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/robocop
“robocop.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/robocop. Accessed November 2, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “robocop,” accessed November 2, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/robocop.
Source: robocop on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.