Hi,
>From the ESR's New Hacker Dictionary - http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/jargon/
nerd n.
1. [mainstream slang] Pejorative applied to anyone with an above-average IQ
and few gifts at small talk and ordinary social rituals. 2. [jargon] Term of
praise applied (in conscious ironic reference to sense 1) to someone who
knows what's really important and interesting and doesn't care to be
distracted by trivial chatter and silly status games. Compare the two senses
of computer geek.
The word itself appears to derive from the lines "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!" in the Dr. Seuss book "If I Ran
the Zoo" (1950). (The spellings `nurd' and `gnurd' also used to be current
at MIT.) How it developed its mainstream meaning is unclear, but sense 1
seems to have entered mass culture in the early 1970s (there are reports
that in the mid-1960s it meant roughly "annoying misfit" without the
connotation of intelligence).
An IEEE Spectrum article (4/95, page 16) once derived `nerd' in its variant
form `knurd' from the word `drunk' backwards, but this bears all the
hallmarks of a bogus folk etymology.
Hackers developed sense 2 in self-defense perhaps ten years later, and some
actually wear "Nerd Pride" buttons, only half as a joke. At MIT one can find
not only buttons but (what else?) pocket protectors bearing the slogan and
the MIT seal.
computer geek n.
1. One who eats (computer) bugs for a living. One who fulfills all the
dreariest negative stereotypes about hackers: an asocial, malodorous,
pasty-faced monomaniac with all the personality of a cheese grater. Cannot
be used by outsiders without implied insult to all hackers; compare
black-on-black vs. white-on-black usage of `nigger'. A computer geek may be
either a fundamentally clueless individual or a proto-hacker in larval
stage. Also called `turbo nerd', `turbo geek'. See also propeller head,
clustergeeking, geek out, wannabee, terminal junkie, spod, weenie. 2. Some
self-described computer geeks use this term in a positive sense and protest
sense 1 (this seems to have been a post-1990 development). For one such
argument, see http://www.darkwater.com/omni/geek.html. See also geek code.
HTH
Pad
-----Original Message-----
From: Peter Vogel [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Thursday, 6 July 2000 10:10 am
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: [SLUG] OT: Nerds and geeks
This may seem like a silly question but I need to know:
What are the finer distinctions between NERD and GEEK?
Which if wither would you like to be?Thanks
Peter
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