-oid

-oid suff.  [from `android'] 1. Used as in mainstream
   English to indicate a poor imitation, a counterfeit, or some
   otherwise slightly bogus resemblance.  Hackers will happily use it
   with all sorts of non-Greco/Latin stem words that wouldn't keep
   company with it in mainstream English.  For example, "He's a
   nerdoid" means that he superficially resembles a nerd but can't
   make the grade; a `modemoid' might be a 300-baud box (Real Modems
   run at 9600 or up); a `computeroid' might be any {bitty box}.
   The word `keyboid' could be used to describe a {chiclet
   keyboard}, but would have to be written; spoken, it would confuse
   the listener as to the speaker's city of origin.  2. More
   specifically, an indicator for `resembling an android' which in
   the past has been confined to science-fiction fans and hackers.  It
   too has recently (in 1991) started to go mainstream (most notably
   in the term `trendoid' for victims of terminal hipness).  This is
   probably traceable to the popularization of the term {droid} in
   "Star Wars" and its sequels.

   Coinages in both forms have been common in science fiction for at
   least fifty years, and hackers (who are often SF fans) have
   probably been making `-oid' jargon for almost that long
   [though GLS and I can personally confirm only that they were
   already common in the mid-1970s -- ESR].



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