nerd

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“
Being considered a nerd is a weight that many of us, of all ages, will do nearly anything to avoid bearing.

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Definitions (5)

Toggle American Heritage definitions American Heritage Dictionary (3)

  1. noun Slang A foolish, inept, or unattractive person.
  2. noun Slang A person who is single-minded or accomplished in scientific or technical pursuits but is felt to be socially inept.
  3. Word History
    The word nerd, undefined but illustrated, first appeared in 1950 in Dr. Seuss's If I Ran the Zoo: "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!” (The nerd is a small humanoid creature looking comically angry, like a thin, cross Chester A. Arthur.) Nerd next appears, with a gloss, in the February 10, 1957, issue of the Glasgow, Scotland, Sunday Mail in a regular column entitled "ABC for SQUARES”: "Nerd—a square, any explanation needed?” Many of the terms defined in this "ABC” are unmistakable Americanisms, such as hep, ick, and jazzy, as is the gloss "square,” the current meaning of nerd. The third appearance of nerd in print is back in the United States in 1970 in Current Slang: "Nurd [sic], someone with objectionable habits or traits.... An uninteresting person, a 'dud.'” Authorities disagree on whether the two nerds—Dr. Seuss's small creature and the teenage slang term in the Glasgow Sunday Mail—are the same word. Some experts claim there is no semantic connection and the identity of the words is fortuitous. Others maintain that Dr. Seuss is the true originator of nerd and that the word nerd ("comically unpleasant creature”) was picked up by the five- and six-year-olds of 1950 and passed on to their older siblings, who by 1957, as teenagers, had restricted and specified the meaning to the most comically obnoxious creature of their own class, a "square.”

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Examples (20)

  • Walker takes every single clich / about what a nerd is and takes it to another level.
  • Unless you're a real horror film nerd, the name Dario Argento probably doesn't mean very much to you —  RNews - TOP STORIES
  • The cool kid is always a slacker with bad grades that gets into trouble, and the nerd is always the one with the good grades and extra-curricular activities.
  • Instead of counting backwards, a good sobriety test for a nerd is to recite the Fibonacci sequence or prime numbers or powers of two. —  RubyCorner
  • One parent described Lindero as a place where a child could explore the arts "without being called a nerd," Kaiser said. —  The Acorn
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Roget's II Roget's II: The New Thesaurus

Used in the same context Used in the Same Context

geek ·  otaku ·  nerds ·  geeks ·  junkie ·  jpop
Roget's II: The New Thesaurus, Third Edition by the Editors of the American Heritage® Dictionary. Copyright © 2003, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Etymologies (1)

Toggle American Heritage etymologies American Heritage Dictionary (1)

  1. Perhaps after Nerd, a character in If I Ran the Zoo, by Theodor Seuss Geisel.
 

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