Hominids and Hominins
The Australian Museum provides a helpful definition of the terms hominid and hominin:
- Hominid – the group consisting of all modern and extinct Great Apes (that is, modern humans, chimpanzees, gorillas and orang-utans plus all their immediate ancestors).
- Hominin – the group consisting of modern humans, extinct human species and all our immediate ancestors (including members of the genera Homo, Australopithecus, Paranthropus and Ardipithecus).
(Humanoids are different!)
These words hominid and hominin are not to be confused with:
Humanoid (adjective)
The adjective humanoid was defined by Oxford University Press's now defunct online dictionary lexico.com[1] as
having an appearance or character resembling that of a human.
and its first example was ‘a small, green, and hideously warty humanoid figure’
The adjective is defined by Lexico.com's successor dictionary.com as
having human characteristics or form; resembling human beings
An example of the word's correct usage is this IEEE report about a humanoid robot. Other examples of usage listed at thesaurus.com refer to a "dynamic humanoid robot" and "vaguely humanoid" robots.
humanoid (noun)
Anthropologists and students of human evolution use the noun humanoid to refer to hominins or hominids rarely if ever.
Giving its definition for the noun humanoid Lexico wrote:
(especially in science fiction) a being resembling a human in its shape.
‘a three-eyed humanoid’
‘We feel death in these shows in ways we don't in the rubbery cartoon world of humanoids that comprises the Hollywood epic and action film.’
Lexico also gave examples of non-scientific usage of the noun humanoid to refer to pre-humans; but the word is confusing, and betrays a lack of knowledge about theories of human origins — it is best left in the realm of science fiction.
