Tonight a friend and I were having an interesting conversation during which she called herself a geek and then we got on the subject of geek and nerd and whether they meant the same thing (she said no, I said yes). She claimed that a geek was more socially acceptable and society accepted what they were doing, whereas nerdiness was . . . well, nerdiness. I can kind of see where she’s coming from–the term applied to computer engineers is generally computer GEEK, for instance. But I still thought they meant the same thing.
Anyway, then I decided to look up the etymologies of the words to see if they did, in fact, mean the same thing, because that’s how much of a GEEK I am. Unfortunately they took down the online dictionary I was using, etc. but I eventually found what I needed.
“Geek” comes from the Scotch geck, meaning “fool,” and the Dutch gek, meaning “mad, silly.” “Nerd” probably comes from the 1940s slang “nert,” meaning a stupid or crazy person,” which probably comes from “nut.” So basically, they both mean the same thing.
The thing that struck me as interesting about these etymologies, though, is that they both imply a lack of intelligence and a lack of discipline–they’re just crazy people. Nowadays, while the words don’t necessarily mean a lack of craziness, both geek and nerd generally mean the person is intelligent–to the point they may socially inept in some way, even.
Moral of the Story: I’ve said it once, and I’ll say it again: words change over time, not just in their denotations but in their connotations. Sometimes, words will come out on the other end of time meaning the complete opposite of what they were originally intended to mean. Do new words, then, have to be formed to fill the holes these words were originally intended to fill?