How old is the word geek
From these original meanings, geek came to be applied, in American English, to an overly diligent, unsociable student. This sense is first recorded in a letter written on 1 st October by the American poet and novelist Jack Kerouac :. Bottles of Old Granddad, big articles in Sat.
Review, in World Telly, everyfuckingwhere, everybody mad, Brooklyn College wanted me to lecture to eager students and big geek questions to answer. The word is now mainly used to denote any unsociable person with an obsessive interest , and specifically a person who is extremely devoted to, and knowledgeable about, computers or related technology.
Geek is the proud, insider term for nerd. In American English, geek also denotes a performer at a carnival or circus whose show consists of bizarre or grotesque acts. In its earliest meanings, geek referred to, among other things, a carnival performer who would bite the head off a live chicken, or other small animal, as part of an act.
These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'geek.
Send us feedback. See more words from the same year. Accessed 13 Nov. See the full definition for geek in the English Language Learners Dictionary. Nglish: Translation of geek for Spanish Speakers. Britannica English: Translation of geek for Arabic Speakers.
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The rise of geekiness becoming more socially acceptable and profitable too is more than evident: The takeover of computer game streaming, the explosion of the board game industry, the resurgence of Dungeons and Dragons, and anime finally!
Some may say its big business capitalizing on that too. What do we think? Who cares? Do you think Dustin from Stranger Things or the guys in Revenge of the Nerds would rather be bullied for being different than have more friends and like minds to hang with? Those times were nostalgic because they were fun, not because they were lonely. On our adventure through the definition of geek, we stumbled upon this post in the Geek Anthropologist , which mentioned some words from John Scalzi.
Unless you enjoy nothing and relish sharing your void of passion with no one too. You can be a geek or be geeky about anything. Because geeky started at home not in Hollywood: In your friends basements under a dusty light as you unfolded a badly drawn adventure map; on rainy evenings at your local game store as your mum dropped you off after school; in the computer room with your mates - while everyone else was running around outside throwing grass at each other; between friends who shared an enthusiasm.
Besides, geeky has been around before it appeared in a dictionary:. Be more geeky, more enthusiastic, more passionate , because the world is never going to reach its capacity for passion - it could do with a whole lot more. In 18th century English, a goff was a "foolish clown. Which is funny, because goof also became a verb, and to goof is basically the same thing as to commit a gaffe. This is a term popularized in the '80s that originally meant pubic hair, as the human race never, ever has enough nicknames for our sex organs and their surrounding areas.
From there's it's an easy step to get to its linguistic pal the "dickwad. While egghead was used to refer to bald people early in the 20th century not because their heads were egg-shaped, obviously, but because they were both smooth , poet Carl Sandburg actually popularized its meaning of "intellectual" back when he was a Chicago newspaper journalist, using it in a article implying that "eggheads" were people full of knowledge but otherwise vapid hence the metaphor having a large skull, but one that was also extremely fragile.
Egghead was certainly a negative term when Richard Nixon used it to describe his boss Dwight Eisenhower's political opponent Adalai Stevenson in This uncommon name became even more uncommon after it became a synonym for nerd, and its all thanks to Felix the Ca t. When the Felix cartoon debuted, it introduced a great many new characters including Poindexter, the nerdy nephew of the Professor, who dressed in a lab coat, wore thick glasses, was super-smart and socially awkard.
The character was such the perfect representation of what a nerd meant at that time, the character's name enter pop culture, and the term has remained even as the character has been almost completely forgotten.
Could someone please explain the origin of Nimrod as an insult, since it refers to a great biblical hunter?
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