-oid is a
suffix much used in the
sciences and
mathematics to indicate a "similarity, not necessarily exact, to something else". According to the
Oxford English Dictionary,
-oid is derived from the
Latin suffix
-oides taken from
Greek and meaning "having the likeness of".
Thus, asteroid means "like a star" and rhomboid[?] means "like a lozenge, or rhombus". There are many examples of such words: anthropoid[?], alkaloid, factoid, trapezoid, and so forth.
When nouns formed using -oid are turned into adjectives, the suffix usually becomes -oidal.
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