Replicants

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A type of artificial being designed to mimic human characteristics and behaviors; often depicted in science fiction narratives exploring themes of identity and consciousness; referring to entities that are created or manufactured to resemble and function like humans in various contexts
2. Synthetic organisms crafted to emulate human traits and emotions, frequently featured in futuristic stories about technological advancements; creatures that blur the line between artificial constructs and living beings, raising ethical questions; beings that serve as replicas of humans designed for specific roles or functions
3. Engineered individuals that closely resemble humans in appearance and function, often used in speculative fiction to examine moral dilemmas involving artificial intelligence; creations that pose challenges to the definition of humanity; entities that exist to fulfill tasks assigned to them, while exploring the nature of sentience and individuality

Etymology: "Replicants" is the plural of "replicant", and the story of the word's modern sense begins on a film set in 1982. The screenwriter David Peoples coined the term for the artificial humans in Ridley Scott's "Blade Runner", where they are manufactured copies of people built to do dangerous work off-world. Before that, the word was simply the Latin "replicans", the present participle of "replicare", meaning "to fold back" or "to repeat", so the core idea of doubling or copying was already in its ancestry. Peoples' choice gave the sense a fresh life. The noun wasn't a term that existed in ordinary English before the film; it was invented for the story, and its meaning was tailored to the plot. The original Latin sense of repeating or folding back survives in the idea of a copy that duplicates an original, which is exactly what the fictional beings are.

Synonyms: duplicates, copies