bionic adj.

of or pertaining to bionics; having or being an artificial, esp. electromechanical, device that replaces part of the body; having ordinary human capabilities increased (as if) by the aid of such devices

Science

  • 1941 ‘E. Binder’ Vassals of the Master World in Planet Stories Fall 22/2 page image bibliography

    ‘Operate? Plastic-surgery?’ The doctor looked puzzled. ‘We use bionic methods.’

  • 1961 Science Digest Nov. 26/2

    The bionic machines and synthetically intelligent systems of tomorrow.

  • 1973 S. Dorman Bear Went Over the Mountain in Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction Aug. 143/1 page image Sonya Dorman bibliography

    His brain is now tremendously amplified by the link to the computer. So far, he’s the only human survivor of the applications of our research. We lost the other two to brain damage during the bionic installation phase.

  • 1988 N. Stephenson Zodiac i. 11 Neal Stephenson

    I threw myself on the mercy of Esmerelda, a black librarian of somewhere between ninety and a hundred who contained within her bionic hairdo all knowledge, or the ability to find it.

  • 1998 W. Shatner et al. Spectre Prologue 3 bibliography

    The fingertips of her natural right hand almost but not quite aligned with the crude bionic structure that served as her left hand.

  • 2014 S. Pinsker A Stretch of Highway Two Lanes Wide in Sooner or Later Everything Falls Into the Sea (2019) 1 page image Sarah Pinsker bibliography

    ‘Brain-Computer Interface,’ his mother said, as if that explained everything. She used the same voice she had used when he was five to tell him where the cattle went when they were loaded onto trucks.[...] The lines in her forehead and the set of her jaw told Andy she was concerned, even if her words hid it. ‘They put electrodes and a chip in your motor cortex,’ she continued. ‘You’re bionic.’

  • 2015 S. White Soldiers Out of Time xiii. 96 page image Steve White bibliography

    The Human Integrity Act’s prohibition of bionic replacement limbs and organs had been one of its most controversial provisions, for they were one of the more defensible forms of man-machine interfacing.


Research requirements

antedating 1941

Earliest cite

"Eando Binder," in Planet Stories

Research History
Ben Ostrowsky submitted a 2015 cite from Steve White.
Ben Ostrowsky submitted a 2014 cite from Sarah Pinsker.

Earliest quotation in OED2 was 1963; improved to 1961 in OED3.

Last modified 2022-01-29 15:23:52
In the compilation of some entries, HDSF has drawn extensively on corresponding entries in OED.