There is some question as to the origin of the word “nerd” as meaning "studious and socially inept," but it is generally accepted that the first instance of its usage was in the 1950 Dr. Seuss book, “If I Ran the Zoo," albeit with another meaning.
A “nerd” in “If I Ran the Zoo" is an imaginary animal that the book’s young narrator feels is a conspicuous hole in the zoo’s inventory (see illustration). Gerald McGrew is the boy’s name, and he has a very clear picture of what belongs in the zoo of his deepest imaginings, and it includes a “nerd.”
“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 illustrated by Seuss is no nerd by today’s standards. He more has the aspect of a gray-bearded uncle to the Grinch, primed and ready to resent his upcoming captivity. There are competing theories as to how “nerd” emerged in its current usage. My favorite is that it derives from “knurd,” a fraternity inversion of the word “drunk” that refers to someone who never parties. I doubt it though.
It didn’t take long after the Seuss coining for "nerd" to be swept into its current meaning. In 1951, an article in Newsweek on the slang of the day reported, “…someone who once would be called a drip or a square is now, regrettably, a nerd…” Why regrettably, I’m not sure. One presumes the writer to be some kind of a nerd.
By the 1970s, “nerd” was the go-to insult for socially awkward intellectuals, an epithet I’d surely have suffered had I been better at math. At this point, nerds across America have essentially done the same thing that African Americans have done with the other N-word, which is to embrace it as a badge of pride, and now that nerds own pretty much everything, they’re using this opportunity to give all of us a weggie.
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