-oid

Suffixes
-cide
-cycle
-cracy
-dom
-ic
-ism
-ist
-mania
-ography
-oid
-ology
-omics
-onomy
-onym
-philia
-phobia
-scope
-stan
-ville
-ware

-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.

See also: -oid, -cide, -cracy, -cycle, -dom, -ic, -ism, -ist