What is the difference between an android and a droid? When was the term droid first used? I always thought the latter was a slight abbreviation of the former (I even remember seeing it spelled 'droid w/an apostrophe at times). I also don’t remember “droid” ever being used outside of a Star Wars context, but I can’t say I’m completely up on my sf literature either. Any nuances I’m missing?
As to the definition, the dictionary is your friend – ‘droid’ is the diminutive of android.
Well, in the Star Wars world “droids” are obviously robots, machines created to serve humanoids et al. I don’t know how common the word was in Sci-Fi realms before that, but I imagine Lucas wasn’t one of the first to use it.
The Webster defintion for android is this:
Main Entry: an·droid
Pronunciation: 'an-"droid
Function: noun
Etymology: Late Greek androeidEs manlike, from Greek andr- + -oeidEs -oid
Date: circa 1751
: a mobile robot usually with a human form
I’ve seen the word “android” used to describe a part man / part machine creature, similar to the meaning or “cyborg”. Webster to a degree links the word android to a more human-like robot.
Keeping in mind that Sci-fi isn’t exactly a precise world, and authors tend to make their own definitions for things you probably aren’t going to get a concrete answer.
I’d propose that perhaps Lucas in Star Wars intentionally used the word “droid” and not “android” to seperate his robots from the strictly human-like ones that were probably accepted as the standard in early Sci-fi. By truncating the word he was safely able to label all the characters, both C-3PO and R2-D2, as droids, where really threepio is the only “android” of the pair.
Perhaps a more adept Sci-Fi geek can step in and offer a more concrete demarcation between the two based on some Sci-Fi reference material that the casual reader may not know about, similar to the way in which most “fantasy” games and books share the same definitions for elves, fairies, and ogres.
R2D2 and C3PO are actually called “Robots” once in the first Star Wars film (it’s at the point where Luke realizes that the Starm Troopers will trace the 'droids to his aunt and uncle’s).
I always assumed that 'droids was short for “androids”. I could swear I’ve seen it written as “droids” and as “'droids”, the latter form re-inforcing the point. In either case, it’s a shorter, more familiar form. I suspect it’s heavily influenced by “drones”, the name given to the caretaker robots in the movie Silent Running.
Side note: The word “Robots”, as everyone knows by now, comes from Karel Capek’s play R.U.R. (“Rossum’s Universal Robots”), derived ultimately from “robotnik” = “worker”. The titular 'bots are actually artifical biological organisms, not metal people. By contrast, “Androids” seems to have been introduced in sf as a name for artificial biological organisms, after “robots” got hijacked for metal people. It’s ironic that “droids” is also now being applied to metal people instead of biologicals.
In the Star Wars universe, “droid” is supposed to be
short for “Droideka”.
“Droid” is also used once in Alien3.
A bit of clarification from a fellow Star Wars fan:
The term “Droideka” is from Episode I and only refers to the Destroyer Droids (those guys that rolled up into balls and shot big lasers). Just another word for Destroyer Droid.