nerd

nerd
    n 1: an insignificant student who is ridiculed as being affected
         or boringly studious [syn: {swot}, {grind}, {nerd}, {wonk},
         {dweeb}]
    2: an intelligent but single-minded expert in a particular
       technical field or profession
    

nerd
 n.

   1. [mainstream slang] Pejorative applied to anyone with an
   above-average IQ and few gifts at small talk and ordinary social
   rituals.

   2. [jargon] Term of praise applied (in conscious ironic reference to
   sense 1) to someone who knows what's really important and interesting
   and doesn't care to be distracted by trivial chatter and silly status
   games. Compare {geek}.

   The word itself appears to derive from the lines "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!" in the Dr.
   Seuss book If I Ran the Zoo (1950). (The spellings `nurd' and `gnurd'
   also used to be current at MIT, where `nurd' is reported from as far
   back as 1957.) How it developed its mainstream meaning is unclear, but
   sense 1 seems to have entered mass culture in the early 1970s (there
   are reports that in the mid-1960s it meant roughly "annoying misfit"
   without the connotation of intelligence.

   An IEEE Spectrum article (4/95, page 16) once derived `nerd' in its
   variant form `knurd' from the word `drunk' backwards, but this bears
   all the hallmarks of a bogus folk etymology. Apparently this etymology
   was folklore at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute around 1979.

   Hackers developed sense 2 in self-defense perhaps ten years later, and
   some actually wear "Nerd Pride" buttons, only half as a joke. At MIT
   one can find not only buttons but (what else?) pocket protectors
   bearing the slogan and the MIT seal.