Read some litarature thenE.t.a Hoffmann for example, The Sandman.
No, since automaton literrally means "it that has a will of its own". Moreover, at least in german, i have read about it being clearly something that has a free will, to a degree.
Perhaps it is just in legal jargon that it means having no will, although Machinae's example did not convince me that it meant that, since it seems it meant simply that it has a diminished capacity of free will in relation to a regular human (and that obviously is the case with automaton anyway)![]()
Hey, there's hilarity of meaning going both ways![]()
Could it be like the french/ saxon thing in english? Beef/ Cow and all that.
It did stick in the english translation, which im sure is not from 200 years ago![]()
Nah, we use the word corvée as well, because it's a feudal legal obligation without recompense. Theoretically, an indentured worker (who must have done something to become indentured in the first place, unlike peasants who had to perform corvée no matter what because they were peasants) would be able to work off the debt that caused him to become indentured in the first place; you can't work off corvée.I'd never heard of 'corvee' before, so I looked it up. The term appears to be more for the French, while 'indenture' would probably be the more common English term.