[SLUG] Re: OT: Nerds and geeks

[Angus Lees <gusl@nospam.cse.unsw.edu.au>]

On Thu, Jul 06, 2000 at 10:10:04AM +1000, Peter Vogel wrote:
> This may seem like a silly question but I need to know:
> 
> What are the finer distinctions between NERD and GEEK?

madcow:~> dict -d jargon nerd "computer geek"
1 definition found

From Jargon File (4.0.0/24 July 1996) [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 earmarks 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.
  
  
1 definition found

From Jargon File (4.0.0/24 July 1996) [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://samsara.circus.com/~omni/geek.html.


-- 
 - Gus
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