“You shall know a word by the company it keeps” ~ J.R. Firth (1957)

June 19, 2013 4:22 AM

"To many people, “geek” and “nerd” are synonyms, but in fact they are a little different. ... Both are dedicated to their subjects, and sometimes socially awkward. The distinction is that geeks are fans of their subjects, and nerds are practitioners of them. A computer geek might read Wired and tap the Silicon Valley rumor-mill for leads on the next hot-new-thing, while a computer nerd might read CLRS and keep an eye out for clever new ways of applying Dijkstra’s algorithm. Note that, while not synonyms, they are not necessarily distinct either: many geeks are also nerds (and vice versa). Do I have any evidence for this contrast? (By the way, this viewpoint dates back to a grad-school conversation with fellow geek/nerd Bryan Barnes, now a physicist at NIST.) The Wiktionary entries for “geek” and “nerd“ lend some credence to my position, but I’d like something a bit more empirical…"
posted by Blasdelb (2 comments total)

I'm genuinely impressed.
posted by Sticherbeast at 4:27 AM on June 19, 2013

Metafilter nerds* say: double.

or possibly geek versus nerd nerds
posted by andraste at 4:36 AM on June 19, 2013