20 lines
1.2 KiB
Plaintext
20 lines
1.2 KiB
Plaintext
-oid
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suff. [from Greek suffix -oid = in the image of ] 1. Used as in mainstream
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slang English to indicate a poor imitation, a counterfeit, or some otherwise
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slightly bogus resemblance. Hackers will happily use it with all sorts of
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non-Greco/Latin stem words that wouldn't keep company with it in mainstream
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English. For example, He's a nerdoid means that he superficially resembles a
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nerd but can't make the grade; a modemoid might be a 300-baud box (Real
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Modems run at 28.8 or up); a computeroid might be any bitty box. The word
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keyboid could be used to describe a chiclet keyboard, but would have to be
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written; spoken, it would confuse the listener as to the speaker's city of
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origin. 2. More specifically, an indicator for resembling an android which
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in the past has been confined to science-fiction fans and hackers. It too
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has recently (in 1991) started to go mainstream (most notably in the term
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trendoid for victims of terminal hipness). This is probably traceable to the
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popularization of the term droid in Star Wars and its sequels. (See also
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windoid. ) Coinages in both forms have been common in science fiction for at
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least fifty years, and hackers (who are often SF fans) have probably been
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making -oid jargon for almost that long.
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