nerd
nouncommon in dialogue
- United States//nɝd//
- Australia//nɜːd//
- New Zealand//nøːd//
- Scotland//neɹd//
A person who is intellectual but generally introverted.
noun
- 1
slangA person who is intellectual but generally introverted.
The bullies used to call him a nerd at school.
1953 Advertisement for "Businessman's Lunch", a play by Michael Quinn, in Patricia Brown, Gloria Mundi They particularly enjoy making fun of one of their fellows who is not present, whom they consider a hopeless nerd – until, that is, they learn he is engaged to marry the boss's daughter.
I once found myself listening to a gay man who was saying wistfully, "I wish there was someplace you could go, maybe a club, where only masculine men would be allowed in." […] Ever tactful, I did not point out to him that if such a place existed, he probably would not be allowed into it, for while he wasn't a campy sort he was too much of a nerd to meet his own specification.
"We were all geeks and nerds, but he was unusually poorly adjusted," recalls Chess, now a mathematics professor at Hunter College.
- 2
informalOne who has an intense, obsessive interest in something.
a computer nerd
a comic-book nerd
- 3
informalA member of a subculture revolving around intellectualism, technology, video games, fantasy and science fiction, comic books and assorted media.
- 4
datedOne who is stupid and socially inept or unattractive; a social outcast.
ALICE: Prithee , what might a nerd be ? GLORIA: A nerd is an idiot or other person absurd.
To much of the world, we in America are nerds. We don't understand the world we live in.
"You're a nerd, Jake, a nerd. You're stupid. You're clumsy. You're dirt, Jake. You're nothing."
Nerds of the Old West
Etymology
Unknown. Attested since 1951 as US student slang. * Perhaps an alteration of nerts (“nuts", "crazy”); see references below. * The word, capitalized, appeared in 1950 in Dr. Seuss’s If I Ran the Zoo as the name of an imaginary animal: *: And then, just to show them, I’ll sail to Katroo / And bring back an It-Kutch, a Preep and a Proo, / A Nerkle, a Nerd and a Seersucker too! * Possibly a rebracketing of inert as a nert, as in he's inert = he's a nerd, in reference to one's lack of competence or athletic ability. * Various unlikely folk etymologies and less likely backronymic speculations also exist.
Forms
- plural
- nerds
nerd · A person who is intellectual but generally introverted.
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