Science & TechnologyGreek → English
Android
/ˈændrɔɪd/noun
A machine built to look and move like a human being.
The Greek roots
ἀνδρο-
andro-
man, male
εἶδος
eîdos
form, appearance
Literally: “man-shaped”
The story of the word
The word is older than the robot by two hundred years. Ephraim Chambers put androides into his Cyclopaedia of 1728, describing an automaton credited to Albertus Magnus, and French fiction kept it alive through the nineteenth century before science fiction made it standard. ἀνήρ means man as opposed to woman, not man as opposed to animal, so android promises a male shape; writers who wanted the other coined gynoid in the 1970s and it never took. The word for human is ἄνθρωπος, which is why anthropology is not the study of men.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → New Latin → English
- First recorded
- 18th century
Same family
androgenpolyandryphilanderasteroid
In a sentence
The android was convincing until it had to climb a kerb.
Half the audience assumed the android on stage was an actor in makeup.