21 lines
1.2 KiB
Plaintext
21 lines
1.2 KiB
Plaintext
nerd
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n. 1. [mainstream slang] Pejorative applied to anyone with an above-average
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IQ and few gifts at small talk and ordinary social rituals. 2. [jargon] Term
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of praise applied (in conscious ironic reference to sense 1) to someone who
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knows what's really important and interesting and doesn't care to be
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distracted by trivial chatter and silly status games. Compare geek. The word
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itself appears to derive from the lines And then, just to show them, I'll
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sail to Ka-Troo / And Bring Back an It-Kutch, a Preep and a Proo, / A
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Nerkle, a Nerd, and a Seersucker, too! in the Dr. Seuss book If I Ran the
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Zoo (1950). (The spellings nurd and gnurd also used to be current at MIT,
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where nurd is reported from as far back as 1957; however, knurd appears to
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have a separate etymology.) How it developed its mainstream meaning is
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unclear, but sense 1 seems to have entered mass culture in the early 1970s
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(there are reports that in the mid-1960s it meant roughly annoying misfit
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without the connotation of intelligence. Hackers developed sense 2 in
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self-defense perhaps ten years later, and some actually wear Nerd Pride
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buttons, only half as a joke. At MIT one can find not only buttons but (what
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else?) pocket protectors bearing the slogan and the MIT seal.
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