The Word "Geek" Part II

After writing my post yesterday I got to thinking, "What is the history (etymology) of the word 'geek'"?

I did some searching and got some very interesting results. The most thorough answer comes from wordorigins.org. Here are some highlights from that entry:

The modern word geek is most likely a northern English variant of an older word, geck, meaning a simpleton or one who is deceived.

By the middle of the 20th century, the term had lost any specific meaning in general slang use, being used simply as a disparaging label. At this time, it began to be applied to overly diligent students.

[B]y the 1980s was being used to refer to aficionados of computers and other high-tech gadgetry, and it started losing some of its negative associations.

Read the whole article to get more of the story.

The connotation of a geek as an "overdiligent student" is definitely still part of the word's meaning today. Anyone who pays a lot of attention to schoolwork is often mocked in our public school culture. I'm not entirely sure why this is, but I have a few theories:

One, those trying to climb the "social ladder", the young socialites as it were, are always jockeying for position, and "geeks" are easy to surpass on a social level. Yes, I suppose it is true that many studious children do not place value on getting a good spot in the social hierarchy, but I still doubt the overall assertion that they are not social, period. To look good in front of others, "geeks" get picked on (I'm feeling like this word needs to be quarantined to quotation marks at the moment).

Another explanation might be jealousy and frustration in seeing school success come to others, but not onesself. Teasing the "geeks" who excel in school might be an outlet to release feelings of failure and self-doubt when it comes to academics. The impuse might be that if one is failing at something, one should at least pretend not to care about it in the first place. Teasing "geeks" who symbolize success in school is a way of asserting this apathy in front of others.

Here is another interesting article about the meaning of the word "geek" along with the near-synonyms "nerd" and "dork", from mental_floss. These words actually have very disparate origins, for instance, did you know that the first known appearance of the word "nerd" is found in a Dr. Seuss book? (!) (It's in If I Ran the Zoo, in case you're wondering.)

More interesting to me that this article itself are the comments from users after the article. Many of the commenters talk about the definitions of "nerd" "geek" and "dork" as defined by their own school experience. What better dictionary could there be on a practical level? There's such a lot of good material there that I'm going to save the examination for a future article.