Peter Vogel <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> What are the finer distinctions between NERD and GEEK?
$ dict -d jargon nerd
1 definition found
>From Jargon File (4.2.0, 31 JAN 2000) [jargon]:
nerd n. 1. [mainstream slang] Pejorative applied to anyone
with an above-average IQ and few gifts at small talk and ordinary
social rituals. 2. [jargon] Term of praise applied (in conscious
ironic reference to sense 1) to someone who knows what's really
important and interesting and doesn't care to be distracted by
trivial chatter and silly status games. Compare the two senses of
{computer geek}.
The word itself appears to derive from the lines "And then, just to
show them, I'll sail to Ka-Troo / And Bring Back an It-Kutch, a Preep
and a Proo, / A Nerkle, a Nerd, and a Seersucker, too!" in the
Dr. Seuss book "If I Ran the Zoo" (1950). (The spellings `nurd' and
`gnurd' also used to be current at MIT.) How it developed its
mainstream meaning is unclear, but sense 1 seems to have entered
mass culture in the early 1970s (there are reports that in the
mid-1960s it meant roughly "annoying misfit" without the connotation
of intelligence).
An IEEE Spectrum article (4/95, page 16) once derived `nerd' in its
variant form `knurd' from the word `drunk' backwards, but this
bears all the hallmarks of a bogus folk etymology.
Hackers developed sense 2 in self-defense perhaps ten years later,
and some actually wear "Nerd Pride" buttons, only half as a joke.
At MIT one can find not only buttons but (what else?) pocket
protectors bearing the slogan and the MIT seal.
$ dict -d jargon "computer geek"
1 definition found
>From Jargon File (4.2.0, 31 JAN 2000) [jargon]:
computer geek n. 1. One who eats (computer) bugs for a living.
One who fulfills all the dreariest negative stereotypes about
hackers: an asocial, malodorous, pasty-faced monomaniac with all the
personality of a cheese grater. Cannot be used by outsiders without
implied insult to all hackers; compare black-on-black vs.
white-on-black usage of `nigger'. A computer geek may be either a
fundamentally clueless individual or a proto-hacker in {larval
stage}. Also called `turbo nerd', `turbo geek'. See also
{propeller head}, {clustergeeking}, {geek out}, {wannabee},
{terminal junkie}, {spod}, {weenie}. 2. Some self-described
computer geeks use this term in a positive sense and protest sense 1
(this seems to have been a post-1990 development). For one such
argument, see `http://www.darkwater.com/omni/geek.html'. See also
{geek code}.
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