-oid
-oid: suff. [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].
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