Isnt It Funny How Geeks Are Known for Being but the Most Popular Game Requires Friends

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

Published October 8, 2019

Sentry: What Is The Difference Between "Geek" And "Nerd"?

These names used to be roughly interchangeable when distinguishing the social outcasts from the in-oversupply in school. However, those so-called social rejects were destined to dominion the globe in the course of Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Marker Zuckerberg, et al. "The geek shall inherit the world," indeed. Oh yeah, and billions of dollars.

In that location'due south a lot of overlap in the meanings of nerd, geek, and dork. Yet, some of these terms take grown up a trivial more than than others, and even wriggled abroad from their initial negative connotations.

Today, being a geek or a nerd no longer implies that yous'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 cool kid.

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

What are the differences?

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

Alright, what sets these terms autonomously? Let'southward get-go with the definitions:

Dork : "a lightheaded, out-of-touch person who tends to look odd or carry ridiculously around others"

Nerd : "socially bad-mannered" and "an intelligent simply single-minded person obsessed with a nonsocial hobby or pursuit"

Geek : "a digital-technology expert or enthusiast" and "a person who has excessive enthusiasm for and some expertise near a specialized discipline or action"

In that location'due south 1 more term we can add to this geeky listing: dweeb. Dweeb is "wimp; a stupid or uninteresting person."

It seems every bit though intelligence and social skills play a big part in a lot of these definitions, but why?

Where did these words come up from?

So, what was that about penises and Dr. Seuss? Oh yeah, the bizarre origin stories nosotros were talking about.

Dweeb

This word is the youngest of the 4, constitute 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 explanation for dweeb'due south beingness 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 draw a dimwit.

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

Dork

And so, back in the 1960s, dork meant "penis." (Must've been something in the air in the '60s …) Ane of the primeval 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 connection to Dorque, a 1940s slang nickname for a solider. Other origin theories of dork are that it'southward an alteration of d*ck, which would make sense for dork'south initial, phallic meaning. Dork also may be related to dirk, a slang term for "penis" dating all the fashion back to the late 1700s.

Dork went on to mean people who do lightheaded, ridiculous things. It's pretty common in slang to liken a foolish person to a taboo trunk role. Butthead, anyone?

Nerd

Nerd's origins are really hazy. (Could the 1960s take anything to practise with that?) The well-nigh frequently cited story is that Dr. Seuss coined the discussion, as the name of a baroque-looking creature, in his 1950 children's book If I Ran the Zoo. Suess also introduced nerd'due south friends, "preep," "proo," and "nerkle" in the aforementioned book.

A yr afterward, Newsweek reported on nerd'south popularity with slang-slinging youth of the day: "… someone who one time 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 word and used it so much that it became a national story—in simply a year. And, why use nerd and non "nerkle"? Nerd had to take been effectually before Seuss, but the doc certainly fabricated information technology more popular.

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

In the '50s, nerds were "square," only the 1984 motion-picture show Revenge of the Nerds started to hint that information technology was "hip to exist square." Computer culture also helped nerd accept flight, but the discussion wasn't explicitly associated with technology. Technological prowess was never a requirement to be a nerd; only that the nerd be extremely intelligent in any academic area to which they paid attending while ignoring the piffling social scene.

Despite being less cool,nerdhas definitely achieved a trendier and more costless status than dorkanddweeb. It's rare to find a proud "computer dork" or a "discussion dweeb," only self-touting "figurer nerds," "book nerds," and "discussion nerds," are everywhere (equally they should be!) From the kickoff, then, nerd seems to operate likegeek in that you tin preface nerdwith just about any field of study in which you claim to take some sincere interest and expertise.

A caveat, though. A quick search of a database on contemporary English shows that the people using nerd are often retaining more than of its academic focus: "math nerd," "linguistic communication nerd, "meteorologist nerd," "chemistry nerd," "statistics nerd," even "bibliophilic nerd."Geek on the other hand … geek often branches out into more social scenes: "motion picture geek," "infinite geek," "music geek," "guitar geek," "ring geek," "suburban lawn geek," "fantasy football geek," "gardening geek" … you get the picture. So, let's get geeky!

Geek

Geek is constitute as early on as the 1870s, originally mocking of "a foolish or worthless person." It might exist a variant ofgeck, a word for "fool, simpleton, or gull" recorded in the 1500s. Thisgeck, in plough, could come from a Germanic root meaning "to croak." Geek. Geck. Croak. We can sort of hear information technology; tin can you?

In the early 1900s, a geek was a circus performer who horrified audiences with freaky things like biting off the heads of live animals, like chickens and snakes. William Lindsay Gresham's novel Nightmare Aisle (1946), about the darker side of showbiz, may take 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 describe general "oddballs" and "eccentrics." How geek became "smart" is debated, only 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. Unlike nerd, though, the word geek rooted itself more squarely with technology-related fields (once it quit biting off animal heads). Thus, because technology is so important in the Digital Historic period, and then are geeks!

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