-oid

   [from Greek suffix -oid = in the image of]

   1.  Used as in mainstream slang 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 28.8 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. (See also {windoid}.)

   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].

[glossary]
[Reference(s) to this entry by made by: {droid}]