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From this article: "We generally view the machine/human divide as a one-way street of advancing technology. Machines, we are repeatedly told, are becoming more human-like—but humans are also becoming more botifed."

https://qz.com/944470/bots-are-sounding-more-like-humans-but-humans-are-sounding-more-like-bots/

Even though it is not a word, I would have expected 'botified', but 'botifed' feels totally unusual.

Relango
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    It looks like a typo to me, probably not caught because botified isn't a standard word, either (and so not in any spell checker). – 1006a Apr 06 '17 at 18:07
  • my issue with it has more to do with the "ify" part (or ified). .. I'd prefer bot-like perhaps? I supposed the ified relates more to other techs used to transform non humans though – Tom22 Apr 06 '17 at 18:08
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    He uses the word "botifed" twice in the article, so not sure if that's a typo. – Relango Apr 06 '17 at 18:09
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    Google Books claims only 62 instances of robotified, against 308 of my preferred roboticised. (Both swamped by 2280 instances of AmE roboticized, obviously! :) – FumbleFingers Apr 06 '17 at 18:18
  • In some contexts, "Cyborged" may be an alternative. – Graffito Apr 06 '17 at 18:27
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    Maybe he means people are being fed by robots. – Hot Licks Apr 06 '17 at 19:04
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    Actually, is bot a robot, or is it a mini program with a single function? Humans may become more mechanical or robotic without becoming more botic. – Yosef Baskin Apr 06 '17 at 19:06
  • (Certainly "botified" is a term that most folks in the US (and probably the UK) would comprehend and interpret in roughly the appropriate way. And it's much catchier than any of the proposed alternatives.) – Hot Licks Apr 06 '17 at 19:06
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    You mean bottify and bottified, right? That needs the same double-t that botted has. – tchrist Apr 06 '17 at 19:08
  • I actually put an answer "Robotic" below, and while I think that is a fine, and perhaps more gramatical word, I DO understand a difference in flavoring evolving between something that might be "like a 'bot'" and something "robotic" .. Robot is more a physical thing that performs physical actions...sometimes repetitively sometimes responsively, while a "bot" is more of a "script" or "app" as in "chat bot" ... auto-didactically ? (not that a 'bot' can't be responsive.. but it emphasises something less physical that 'robot' is reserved more for these days. – Tom22 Apr 06 '17 at 19:09
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    @sumelic Not to mention—particularly apposite here—another neologism: Spotify. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Jul 05 '17 at 23:27
  • Perhaps it is a misprint for “bottle-fed”. (As opposed to having been weaned, and being able to cut up their meat themselves.) – David Jun 17 '19 at 19:55

2 Answers2

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As others have said in the comments, the two instances of "botifed" that you observed are certainly a typo for "botified." The spelling "botified" is in fact also used twice in the article.

The suffix "-ify" /ɪfaɪ/ (which turns into "-ified" /ɪfaɪd/ when you add "-ed") is a somewhat productive, if informal, way of turning monosyllabic nouns into verbs with a meaning something like "to make into [the noun]". "Humans are also becoming more botified" means something like "Humans are becoming more like robots".

Some suffixes, such as -er, cause a single consonant letter to double after a stressed "short" vowel, but there isn't an established consonant-doubling rule for words suffixed with -ify. The spelling botify is reasonably regular; other comparable examples are the brand name Spotify (as Janus Bahs Jacquet mentioned in a comment), gasify (which seems to be a much more common spelling of this word than "gassify"), manify (which actually has an OED entry!), and slugify (which seems to be used as programming jargon).

Spontaneously created -ify words are sometimes written with a hyphen before the suffix and quotation marks around the word.

herisson
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I would use "robotic" rather than "botified", as it is a proper English adjective.

George Erhard
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    Hello, George. This is a 'comment' rather than an 'answer' on ELU. – Edwin Ashworth Apr 06 '17 at 18:55
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    "Cybernetic" might be a better word choice, but it is unclear to me if this word as used in pop-culture conforms to the strict definition(s) of "cybernetic." Certainly a cyborg is accepted as a machine-augmentation to a biological organism. – Yorik Apr 06 '17 at 20:19
  • The phrasing suggests that this is speaking to traits and behavior, rather than the presence or absence of components. The term "cybernetic" doesn't really convey much other than "machine-augmented biological", but "robotic" definitely could describe behavior. – George Erhard Apr 07 '17 at 16:47