The term slot is derived from the late 14c. meaning a hollow at the base of the throat above the breastbone. The word originates from the Old French esclot, of uncertain origin, but it is related to the Old Norse slod, which means “slot”. The slot as a verb is recorded in the 1520s, but the term slot machine doesn’t appear until 1888. This article looks at the meaning of the term.

The word “slot” was first used in 1747, meaning “to cut a hole in something, especially a metal sheet.” It later gained a more specific meaning: “to drop a coin into a machine” (in 1888), and by 1940, it came to mean “to take a position in a place.” The term is now obsolete, but the original sense is still used in many instances. The term “slot” is also used to refer to the space between the two circles on an aircraft’s wing, where the airflow is maximized.

The Dialog Engine understands this language and can map values to slot types, such as a flight number or flight code. This is useful for building a bot that understands utterances and can be programmed to process specific information for each slot. You can even use regular expressions to match a single piece of information in a user’s utterance. These are just a few ways to customize the Slot language in a chatbot.