Humanoid

How to spell humanoid

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce humanoid

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does humanoid mean?

1. adjectiveHaving a form or characteristics resembling those of a human.
2. nounA being or machine that resembles a human in form or behaviour.

Humanoid in a sentence

• adjective

  The factory unveiled a humanoid robot that could walk and grip tools.

• noun

  The engineers programmed the humanoid to serve drinks at the conference.

• adjective

  The film featured a humanoid alien with two arms and an upright posture.

• noun

  In the novel, a humanoid pilots the ship while the crew sleep.

Where does humanoid come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The base of this word is the Latin humanus, meaning 'of or belonging to people', which itself relates to homo, the Latin word for a human being. To that English attached the suffix -oid, which comes from the Greek -oeides, meaning 'having the form of' or 'resembling'; the same ending gives us words like 'asteroid' (star-shaped) and 'spheroid' (ball-shaped). The compound was coined fairly recently, around the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, originally in scientific and anthropological writing to describe forms that look human without quite being human. Science fiction later seized on the word for robots and aliens built on a human plan, and that is now its most familiar use. The spelling is mostly straightforward, but the giveaway trap is the -oid ending, where the 'oi' must not slide into 'oy' or be reduced to a single letter.

How the word is built

• human (from Latin humanus: of or belonging to people)
• -oid (from Greek -oeides: having the form of, resembling)