droid

• 'droid

1952. From android via aphaeresis. Coined by American science fiction author Mari Wolf in "Robots of the World! Arise!", and popularised by the film Star Wars (1977).

• IPA^(key): /ˈdɹɔɪd/
• Rhymes: -ɔɪd

droid (plural droids)

1. A robot, especially one made with some physical resemblance to a human.
   • 1952 July, Wolf, Mari, “Robots of the World! Arise!”, in If‎, volume 1, number 3, page 76:

     It's crazy. They're swarming all over Carron City. They're stopping robots in the streets—household Robs, commercial Droids, all of them. They just look at them, and then the others quit work and start off with them.

   • 1976, George Lucas, Star Wars: From the Adventures of Luke Skywalker, New York: Ballantine Books, p 77:

     “These aren’t the ’droids you’re looking for,” Kenobi told him pleasantly.

   • 1995, J. D. Robb, Glory in Death, page 39:

     The bartender was a droid, as most were, but she doubted this one had been programmed to listen cheerfully to customers' hard luck stories.

• For quotations of use of this term, see Citations:droid.

• “droid” in Brave New Words: The Oxford Dictionary of Science Fiction, Oxford University Press, 2007, →ISBN, page 38.
• droid n. at the OED Science Fiction Citations Project

• dorid

• IPA^(key): /drɔi̯d/

droid

1. Soft mutation of troid.