Droid (Star Wars)
type of fictional robot in the "Star Wars" franchise
In the Star Wars space opera franchise, a droid is a fictional robot possessing some degree of artificial intelligence. The term is a clipped form of "android", a word originally reserved for robots designed to look and act like a human. The word "android" itself stems from the New Latin word "androīdēs", meaning "manlike", itself from the Ancient Greek ἀνδρος (andrós) (genitive of ἀνήρ (anḗr), "man (adult male)" or "human being") + -ειδής (-eidḗs), itself from εἶδος (eîdos, "form, image, shape, appearance, look").
Writer and director George Lucas first used the term "droid" in the second draft script of Star Wars, completed 28 January 1975. However, the word does have a precedent: science fiction writer Mari Wolf used the word in her story "Robots of the World! Arise!" in 1952. It is not known if Lucas knew of this reference when he wrote Star Wars, or if he came up with the term independently.
The word "droid" has been a registered trademark of Lucasfilm Ltd since 1977.
Behind the scenes
Droids are performed using a variety of methods, including robotics, actors inside costumes (in one case, on stilts), and computer animation.
Trademark
Lucasfilm registered "droid" as a trademark in 1977.
The public source identifies “Droid (Star Wars)” as type of fictional robot in the "Star Wars" franchise. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Droid, Star and Wars.
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This entry incorporates text from “Droid (Star Wars)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.