What You Call Someone Whos Very Smart but Knows Nothing

What Are The Differences Between "Nerds," "Geeks," And "Dorks"?

Published October viii, 2019

Watch: What Is The Departure Between "Geek" And "Nerd"?

These names used to be roughly interchangeable when distinguishing the social outcasts from the in-crowd in schoolhouse. Yet, those and so-called social rejects were destined to dominion the world in the form of Elon Musk, Nib Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, et al. "The geek shall inherit the earth," indeed. Oh yeah, and billions of dollars.

At that place's a lot of overlap in the meanings of nerd, geek, and dork. Withal, some of these terms accept grown up a little more than others, and even wriggled away from their initial negative connotations.

Today, being a geek or a nerd no longer implies that you'll receive a horrible wedgie and get thrown in a locker. Based on popular usage of these terms, geeks and nerds are a new brand of absurd kid.

We wanted to explore what sets these terms apart and, as the Give-and-take Nerds that nosotros are, we couldn't turn down the opportunity to highlight their truly bizarre biographies. Bonus: they generally have absolutely nothing to do with book-smarts and glasses. Biting heads off chickens. Dr. Seuss. Dwarfs. Penises. It's all in there.

What are the differences?

First and foremost: Remember, as with all words (including conventional slurs like b*tch), these terms tin can be used in jest or in anger, to praise or disparage. Calling someone a nerd can be a compliment or a dis, depending on the person and context. So, be mindful!

Alright, what sets these terms autonomously? Allow'due south start with the definitions:

Dork : "a silly, out-of-touch on person who tends to expect odd or behave ridiculously around others"

Nerd : "socially awkward" and "an intelligent merely single-minded person obsessed with a nonsocial hobby or pursuit"

Geek : "a digital-technology practiced or enthusiast" and "a person who has excessive enthusiasm for and some expertise most a specialized subject or activity"

At that place's 1 more than term we tin add to this geeky list: dweeb. Dweeb is "wimp; a stupid or uninteresting person."

It seems as though intelligence and social skills play a large part in a lot of these definitions, just why?

Where did these words come up from?

So, what was that about penises and Dr. Seuss? Oh aye, the baroque origin stories nosotros were talking nearly.

Dweeb

This word is the youngest of the four, found in the 1960s. Dweeb's associations with unintelligence stem from the possibility that the word is a fusion of dwarf and feeb (short for "feeble-minded person").

This isn't to say that dwarves are unintelligent! What may be an caption for dweeb'south existence is that '60s college kids riffed on the physically short stature of dwarves and the short brain span of "feeble-mindedness" and came up with dweeb to describe a dimwit.

In an odd 2012 book called The Lizzard of Ozz, an writer named Dr. Rufus T. Dingleberry confirms dweeb'south "dimwitted" character, which he claims is a effect of the dweeb's parents' obsession with sure mind-altering substances.

Dork

So, back in the 1960s, dork meant "penis." (Must've been something in the air in the '60s …) One of the earliest instances comes from the 1961 novel Valhalla by Jere Peacock, where dork had a fancy-seeming spelling: "Y'all satisfy many women with that dorque?"

This spelling of dorquesuggests a connexion to Dorque, a 1940s slang nickname for a solider. Other origin theories of dork are that it's an alteration of d*ck, which would brand sense for dork's initial, phallic significant. Dork likewise may be related to dirk, a slang term for "penis" dating all the mode dorsum to the tardily 1700s.

Dork went on to hateful people who do light-headed, ridiculous things. Information technology's pretty mutual in slang to liken a foolish person to a taboo trunk part. Butthead, anyone?

Nerd

Nerd's origins are really hazy. (Could the 1960s have anything to do with that?) The about often cited story is that Dr. Seuss coined the word, as the proper noun of a bizarre-looking fauna, in his 1950 children's book If I Ran the Zoo. Suess also introduced nerd's friends, "preep," "proo," and "nerkle" in the same book.

A year afterwards, Newsweek reported on nerd's popularity with slang-slinging youth of the 24-hour interval: "… someone who once would be called a drip or a square is now, regrettably, a nerd."

The trouble with the Seuss origin theory is that it's very unlikely teens (who probably weren't reading Seuss) picked up the give-and-take and used it so much that it became a national story—in only a twelvemonth. And, why use nerd and non "nerkle"? Nerd had to have been around before Seuss, merely the doc certainly made information technology more popular.

Etymologists think nerd has a combination of influences, in add-on to Dr. Seuss (and possibly informing his ain apply). These include a long-running joke of spelling drunk backwards ("knurd"), implying that studious people don't drink or political party; a 1930s slang term for nuts ("nerts"); and a ventriloquist dummy pop in the '40s named Mortimer Snerd.

In the '50s, nerds were "foursquare," just the 1984 movie Revenge of the Nerds started to hint that it was "hip to be square." Estimator civilization besides helped nerd take flying, just the word wasn't explicitly associated with technology. Technological prowess was never a requirement to be a nerd; just that the nerd be extremely intelligent in whatever academic area to which they paid attention while ignoring the lilliputian social scene.

Despite being less absurd,nerdhas definitely achieved a trendier and more gratuitous status than dorkanddweeb. It's rare to find a proud "computer dork" or a "word dweeb," but self-touting "computer nerds," "book nerds," and "give-and-take nerds," are everywhere (as they should be!) From the commencement, then, nerd seems to operate likegeek in that yous can preface nerdwith just almost whatever subject in which you merits to have some sincere interest and expertise.

A caveat, though. A quick search of a database on gimmicky English language shows that the people using nerd are ofttimes retaining more of its academic focus: "math nerd," "language nerd, "meteorologist nerd," "chemical science nerd," "statistics nerd," even "bibliophilic nerd."Geek on the other hand … geek often branches out into more social scenes: "picture show geek," "infinite geek," "music geek," "guitar geek," "band geek," "suburban backyard geek," "fantasy football geek," "gardening geek" … you get the movie. So, allow's become geeky!

Geek

Geek is establish as early on as the 1870s, originally mocking of "a foolish or worthless person." It might be a variant ofgeck, a give-and-take for "fool, simpleton, or dupe" recorded in the 1500s. Thisgeck, in turn, could come from a Germanic root meaning "to croak." Geek. Geck. Croak. We can sort of hear it; can you?

In the early 1900s, a geek was a circus performer who horrified audiences with freaky things like bitter off the heads of alive animals, like chickens and snakes. William Lindsay Gresham'southward novel Nightmare Alley (1946), nigh the darker side of showbiz, may have helped popularized the term.

Considering the bizarre acts performed by circus geeks, information technology may exist no surprise that the word geek eventually came to depict general "oddballs" and "eccentrics." How geek became "smart" is debated, but by the 1950s and 1960s, a geek was a "unlikable brainiac." Not for long!

With the computer and tech revolution, geek boomed in popularity with its friend nerd. Dissimilar nerd, though, the discussion geek rooted itself more than squarely with technology-related fields (one time it quit biting off animal heads). Thus, because technology is then of import in the Digital Age, so are geeks!

carsonmiturnenings.blogspot.com

Source: https://www.dictionary.com/e/dork-dweeb-nerd-geek-oh/

Share this post