Android (robot) - Etymology

Etymology

The word was coined from the Greek root ἀνδρ- 'man' and the suffix -oid 'having the form or likeness of'.

The term "droid", coined by George Lucas for the original Star Wars film and now used widely within science fiction, originated as an abridgment of "android", but has been used by Lucas and others to mean any robot, including distinctly non-human form machines like R2-D2. The abbreviation "andy", coined as a pejorative by writer Philip K. Dick in his novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, has seen some further usage, such as within the TV series Total Recall 2070.

The Oxford English Dictionary traces the earliest use (as "Androides") to Ephraim Chambers' Cyclopaedia, in reference to an automaton that St. Albertus Magnus allegedly created. The term "android" appears in US patents as early as 1863 in reference to miniature human-like toy automatons. The term android was used in a more modern sense by the French author Auguste Villiers de l'Isle-Adam in his work Tomorrow's Eve (1886). This story features an artificial humanlike robot named Hadaly. As said by the officer in the story, "In this age of Realien advancement, who knows what goes on in the mind of those responsible for these mechanical dolls." The term made an impact into English pulp science fiction starting from Jack Williamson's The Cometeers (1936) and the distinction between mechanical robots and fleshy androids was popularized by Edmond Hamilton's Captain Future (1940–1944).

Although Karel Čapek's robots in R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots) (1921) – the play that introduced the word robot to the world – were organic artificial humans, the word "robot" has come to primarily refer to mechanical humans, animals, and other beings. The term "android" can mean either one of these, while a cyborg ("cybernetic organism" or "bionic man") would be a creature that is a combination of organic and mechanical parts.

Authors have used the term android in more diverse ways than robot or cyborg. In some fictional works, the difference between a robot and android is only their appearance, with androids being made to look like humans on the outside but with robot-like internal mechanics. In other stories, authors have used the word "android" to mean a wholly organic, yet artificial, creation. Other fictional depictions of androids fall somewhere in between.

Wilson, who defines androids as a "synthetic human being", distinguishes between three types of androids, based on their body's composition:

• the mummy type - where androids are made of "dead things" or "stiff, inanimate, natural material", such as mummies, puppets, dolls and statues
• the golem type - androids made from flexible, possibly organic material, including golems and homunculi
• the automaton type - androids which are a mix of dead and living parts, including automatons and robots

Although human morphology is not necessarily the ideal form for working robots, the fascination in developing robots that can mimic it can be found historically in the assimilation of two concepts: simulacra (devices that exhibit likeness) and automata (devices that have independence).