The frightening consequences of electroshock therapy
I'm a middle aged government attorney living in a rural section of the northeast U.S. I'm unmarried and come from a very large family. When not preoccupied with family and my job, I read enormous amounts, toy with evolutionary theory, and scratch various parts on my body.
This journal is filled with an enormous number of half-truths and outright lies, including this sentence.
Everything you will ever need to know about geeks and nerds
Origins
The term 'geek' has its origins in traveling carnivals, where the geek was the person who bit the heads off chickens and did other similarly outrageous things. Clearly, this term has evolved somewhat because the description given above would now more accurately describe a person known as 'Ozzy Osbourne'.
'Nerd' comes from the book 'A Day at the Zoo' by Dr. Seuss from 1950:
However, according to this article, there are some who claim that nerd comes from 'nurd', a term used at MIT since at least 1957 and which only emerged into popular usage around 1970. The same article also explores and discards the possibility that nerd came from 'knurd', which was created from 'drunk' spelled backwards.
General Discussion
Although there are some disputes, there appears to be a general agreement that a nerd is a socially inept individual who is smart. However, as is demonstrated in this discussion thread, the social ineptitude of nerds means that they will argue over just about everything.
Geek seems somewhat more vague. Kenny defines himself as a geek, but he is 6'2" tall, has a black belt in some sort of strange martial art, and seems to be the sort of person that people think of as cool. I guess he is a computer geek, and he does things associated with geeky people like play board games and watch science fiction films. But it is a bit of a stretch. I think Kenny is more of a normal person who hangs in the world of geeks.
On the other hand, I'm sort of the opposite. I work in a field that is not associated with geekdom, but anyone who has spent more than five minutes in my presence can tell you that I am pretty socially inept and very clearly not cool at all. A lot people have wondered why I'm not programming computers for a living or working as in academia in some obscure field.
According to this blog, a 'nerd' is a quiet, socially inept individual while a 'geek' is an individual who proudly wears his or her social ineptitude in public. A 'dork' is an aging geek who has mellowed somewhat.
Here we have geek as a person who practices social skills over the computer, and a nerd as a socially inept individual with pocket protector and taped glasses who is obsessed with science and math.
This web page has a table where 'geek' is the most socially inept and the nerd being the least. Interestingly, 'twits', which are in the middle, can grow up to be lawyers, drug dealers, and code hackers. The rest of the web site is in written in German, so the whole thing is suspect as commentary on English slang usage.
Here we have a smartly designed web page with definitions for not only 'nerd' and 'geek', but also 'dweeb', 'dork', 'square', 'computer jock', 'squid', 'squeif', and 'schnoid'. I had never even heard of 'squid', 'squeif', and 'schnoid'. I'm guessing that this article was originally written in the late 1980s or early 1990s because of the reference to the Amiga computer.
According to the online encyclopedia, 'Wilkipedia', a nerd is a socially inept geek. According to me, Jimbo Wales, the person who founded an online encyclopedia and decided to call it 'The Wilkipedia', is clearly a nerd.
On the other hand, despite what he says in his article, the fellow in this picture
is NOT a geek even though he does look somewhat like my brother 6 of 12. 6 of 12 is a music nut, which as far as I am concerned makes him neither geek nor nerd, but part of some undefined group.
On the other hand the person who wrote this article
The Physics of Disney's Beauty and the Beast
clearly IS a geek.
(Incidently, an old friend from college gave some assistance on this article.)
Whatever it is, geekdom appears to have become more popular in recent years. Here's an extensive article from 'Wired Magazine' on the rise of Geekdom.
Links
Here's a fellow with a list of links designed specifically with geeks in mind.
Here are a bunch of quizzes designed to test your level of geekitude.
Googlisms for nerd and geek can be found here and here respectively. A 'googlism' what you get when you type '(word) is' into Google. Apparently enough people have done this that the folks at Google have done compilations
And of course, there are the movies Revenge of the Nerds (1984) and Revenge of the Nerds II, Nerds in Paradise (1987), with subsequent direct to video sequels Revenge of the Nerds III: The Next Generation(1992) and Revenge of the Nerds IV: Nerds in Love(1994).
The term 'geek' has its origins in traveling carnivals, where the geek was the person who bit the heads off chickens and did other similarly outrageous things. Clearly, this term has evolved somewhat because the description given above would now more accurately describe a person known as 'Ozzy Osbourne'.
'Nerd' comes from the book 'A Day at the Zoo' by Dr. Seuss from 1950:
Apparently, the picture of the nerd in the book looks much as we might imagine a sterotypical nerd to look today, with thick glasses and pocket protector.
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!"
However, according to this article, there are some who claim that nerd comes from 'nurd', a term used at MIT since at least 1957 and which only emerged into popular usage around 1970. The same article also explores and discards the possibility that nerd came from 'knurd', which was created from 'drunk' spelled backwards.
General Discussion
Although there are some disputes, there appears to be a general agreement that a nerd is a socially inept individual who is smart. However, as is demonstrated in this discussion thread, the social ineptitude of nerds means that they will argue over just about everything.
Geek seems somewhat more vague. Kenny defines himself as a geek, but he is 6'2" tall, has a black belt in some sort of strange martial art, and seems to be the sort of person that people think of as cool. I guess he is a computer geek, and he does things associated with geeky people like play board games and watch science fiction films. But it is a bit of a stretch. I think Kenny is more of a normal person who hangs in the world of geeks.
On the other hand, I'm sort of the opposite. I work in a field that is not associated with geekdom, but anyone who has spent more than five minutes in my presence can tell you that I am pretty socially inept and very clearly not cool at all. A lot people have wondered why I'm not programming computers for a living or working as in academia in some obscure field.
According to this blog, a 'nerd' is a quiet, socially inept individual while a 'geek' is an individual who proudly wears his or her social ineptitude in public. A 'dork' is an aging geek who has mellowed somewhat.
Here we have geek as a person who practices social skills over the computer, and a nerd as a socially inept individual with pocket protector and taped glasses who is obsessed with science and math.
This web page has a table where 'geek' is the most socially inept and the nerd being the least. Interestingly, 'twits', which are in the middle, can grow up to be lawyers, drug dealers, and code hackers. The rest of the web site is in written in German, so the whole thing is suspect as commentary on English slang usage.
Here we have a smartly designed web page with definitions for not only 'nerd' and 'geek', but also 'dweeb', 'dork', 'square', 'computer jock', 'squid', 'squeif', and 'schnoid'. I had never even heard of 'squid', 'squeif', and 'schnoid'. I'm guessing that this article was originally written in the late 1980s or early 1990s because of the reference to the Amiga computer.
According to the online encyclopedia, 'Wilkipedia', a nerd is a socially inept geek. According to me, Jimbo Wales, the person who founded an online encyclopedia and decided to call it 'The Wilkipedia', is clearly a nerd.
On the other hand, despite what he says in his article, the fellow in this picture
is NOT a geek even though he does look somewhat like my brother 6 of 12. 6 of 12 is a music nut, which as far as I am concerned makes him neither geek nor nerd, but part of some undefined group.
On the other hand the person who wrote this article
The Physics of Disney's Beauty and the Beast
clearly IS a geek.
(Incidently, an old friend from college gave some assistance on this article.)
Whatever it is, geekdom appears to have become more popular in recent years. Here's an extensive article from 'Wired Magazine' on the rise of Geekdom.
Links
Here's a fellow with a list of links designed specifically with geeks in mind.
Here are a bunch of quizzes designed to test your level of geekitude.
Googlisms for nerd and geek can be found here and here respectively. A 'googlism' what you get when you type '(word) is' into Google. Apparently enough people have done this that the folks at Google have done compilations
And of course, there are the movies Revenge of the Nerds (1984) and Revenge of the Nerds II, Nerds in Paradise (1987), with subsequent direct to video sequels Revenge of the Nerds III: The Next Generation(1992) and Revenge of the Nerds IV: Nerds in Love(1994).
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