A ‘nerd’ can be a ‘geek’ and also a ‘wonk’

One of my Christmas gifts last year was a pair of socks in bold blue, green, and yellow proclaiming me a “BIG OL’ WORD NERD.” I own the soft impeachment. And if you regularly read this column, you may be a BIG OL’ WORD NERD, too.

Nerd originated comparatively recently, in 1950, in Dr. Seuss’ “If I Ran the Zoo.” Its current sense, Merriam-Webster says, describes “one slavishly devoted to intellectual or academic pursuits.”

The concept of nerdity has a long history. The Oxbridge and Ivy League colleges traditionally had disparaging terms for students who worked too hard and devoted themselves too diligently to learning: swot in England, grind in the United States.

Beyond that, bookworm, egghead, wonk, and bluestocking (for women) are not terms of admiration, suggesting undue attention to intellectual activity.

Rather, the “gentleman’s C,” a mere passing grade, has been the goal rather than trying too hard, and one can trust that such a graduate will never bore you at parties with excessive erudition.

Geek, originally a term for a carnival performer who would, for example, bite off the heads of live chickens, has similarly come to indicate an unattractive intellectual, carrying a slightly different connotation of excessive enthusiasm.  

Dork, from the 1960s, identifying a person who is socially inept or awkward, overlaps somewhat with nerd, who is socially awkward from being too studious, thus liable to bore you with esoteric knowledge. All three – nerd, dork, and geek – suggest social ineptitude.

In a familiar pattern, people subjected to pejorative terms can seize on them and flaunt them as a badge of pride. The term for this is “re-appropriation” or “reclamation.” A linked term that linguists use is “amelioration,” in which the original negative sense comes to take on positive connotations. 

Yankee, for example, was originally Britons’ disparaging term for the American Colonists, who proudly took it up as a badge of national identity.

(You may know E.B. White’s formulation: “To foreigners, a Yankee is an American. To Americans, a Yankee is a Northerner. To Northerners, a Yankee is a New Englander. To New Englanders, a Yankee is a Vermonter. And in Vermont, a Yankee is somebody who eats pie for breakfast.”)

So the computer specialists at Best Buy appropriate an originally negative term and identify themselves as the Geek Squad. And, of course, I wear those socks. How about you?

John McIntyre was an editor for 34 years at The Baltimore Sun.