4.0088 3 Nerds and a Doddle (69)

Elaine Brennan & Allen Renear (EDITORS@BROWNVM.BITNET)
Mon, 21 May 90 17:28:28 EDT

Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 4, No. 0088. Monday, 21 May 1990.


(1) Date: Sunday, 20 May 1990 01:40:10 EDT (18 lines)
From: "Patrick W. Conner" <U47C2@WVNVM>
Subject: 4.0075 Nerds

(2) Date: Sun, 20 May 90 17:15:37 EDT (26 lines)
From: barry alpher <BJA@CORNELLA.cit.cornell.edu>
Subject: nerd

(3) Date: Sun, 20 May 90 08:39 CDT (18 lines)
From: Robin Smith <RSMITH@KSUVM>
Subject: Nerds in the '60s

(4) Date: Sun, 20 May 90 10:51:59 CDT (7 lines)
From: wtosh@cs.utexas.edu (Wayne Tosh)
Subject: "doddle"

(1) --------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Sunday, 20 May 1990 01:40:10 EDT
From: "Patrick W. Conner" <U47C2@WVNVM>
Subject: 4.0075 Nerds (59)

I accept Richard Ristow's etymology for NERD to a Swarthmore revue from
about 1960, if that's verifiable. That would explain credibly where the
Happy Days writers got the word. If we want to push it back further, we
should look to Mad Magazine, a source during that period for a lot of
amateur material, as Monty Python is now. I agree that this is all
mostly a waste of time, except that the word is very common, threatens
to become a part of our standard vocabulary, and is most under-documented
in OED2. It's a good example to which students can relate when talking
about the limitations of dictionaries to describe a language's
vocabulary.

But I solemnly promise not to comment nerdishly on NERD anymore.

--Pat Conner
(2) --------------------------------------------------------------35----
Date: Sun, 20 May 90 17:15:37 EDT
From: barry alpher <BJA@CORNELLA.cit.cornell.edu>
Subject: nerd

Patrick W Conner has queried me, or called my bluff, on the attestation
/nerd/ in 1968.

The utterer was myself.

The referent was was ugly and stupid and had no style. This was, I
believe, the original sense of the word before it acquired 'studious'
(which, although clearly not synonymous with 'smart', seems to be
associated with 'smart' in common usage).

The addressee was Dr Melvin Firestone of Arizona State University. He
asked me what /nerd/ meant and I referred him to the droplet of glue; he
understood perfectly.

I wondered at the time if this usage was my own coinage, but the rapidly
accelerating popularity of /nerd/ during this period made me realize that
I must have heard the word so used by someone else. So it seems to be a
fine story of the collective unconscious and a term whose time had come.
I suspect that 'studious' entered via TV; if so, we have a fine example
of how power can bend the collective unconscious.

Barry Alpher
(3) --------------------------------------------------------------24----
Date: Sun, 20 May 90 08:39 CDT
From: Robin Smith <RSMITH@KSUVM>
Subject: Nerds in the '60s

Sure, there are better things to talk about than the age of 'nerd,' but
not at this time of the year. I can attest that it was in use in the
South (east Tennessee, anyway) among high school students around 1962
as a term of abuse. The precise sense was never clear to me.
(Webster's refers to certain uses of obscenities as 'meaningless
intensifiers'; I would have to have called this a 'meaningless term of
abuse.') I can also testify that by 1964, it was in use at some East
Coast universities with a more precise sense: roughly, a socially inept,
foolish, and probably physically unattractive person. My memories are
that it was applied only to males and that it was more popular among
fraternity types. It was definitely not a coinage of any TV show
writers.
--Robin Smith
Philosophy, Kansas State University
(4) --------------------------------------------------------------18----
Date: Sun, 20 May 90 10:51:59 CDT
From: wtosh@cs.utexas.edu (Wayne Tosh)
Subject: "doddle"

Lest we dawdle further with "doddle," may I suggest that it is merely the
o-grade ablaut of "diddle."