Insults, redefined: How the geek inherited the earth

It was only 20 years ago that to be called a “geek” or a “nerd” was to be insulted.These academically inclined stereotypes, which emerged largely out of the American high-school system, were seen to indicate young people of a gauche nature who were socially inept, boring and unpopular.“Jock” was the desirable tag. It indicated a relatively low IQ, for certain, but high levels of popularity; in other words, a young person who was socially successful.Today, we all spend hours alone in front of computers or other screens. Video games are mainstream and widespread. In fact, the screen has become so integral to our world that those who first excelled at leveraging it — “nerds” such as Bill Gates of Microsoft, Steve Jobs of Apple and Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook — in many ways, rule the world.They are the billionaires to beat, the innovators to challenge, the pecking order to maybe aspire to, if one is truly ambitious. They’re seen as visionaries whose imagination is improving or, at the very least shaping, our reality.They’re still often seen as socially inept and — for a range of reasons that have nothing to do with unfair stereotypes — are fairly unpopular; but they hold the reigns. And that power has driven a linguistic shift by which we now use the term “geek” to mean brilliant, unique and potentially powerful.There’s even a “geek chic” trend in fashion (oversized spectacles, brogues, a side-part). High-street retailer Topshop’s top-selling T-shirts and hoodies of 2022 included a range that simply say “Geek” or “Nerd”.Which is interesting, because the word geek can be traced to the Low German “geck” and the Dutch “gek”, meaning fool, idiot or half-wit. Geck in Scottish is still a person who is an object of scorn. The word has been in use in English, to signify a foolish, undesirable or contemptible sort, since the 1870s.By the early 1900s, in urban US slang, it had come to indicate a sexual degenerate or a drunkard. By the 1950s, it was anyone who was clumsy, eccentric or offensive.Only in the 1970s, in slang evolving among black American teenagers, did the eccentric connotation take on the added notion of intellectual. By the 1980s and ’90s, a geek was someone who spent too much time with their books and, partly as a result of this behaviour and partly as a result of the impact of this behaviour on their personality, was a social outcast.The association with computers and other electronics emerged in the early 1980s too, with early usage in this context traceable to Usenet discussion groupsMeanwhile, the term “jock” was undergoing a change as well. Derived from “jockstrap”, the piece of protective gear for sportsmen, it went from indicating a popular young athlete in his prime; to indicating someone who could converse about nothing but sport; to indicating someone who had neglected all intellectual pursuits.Today, it is seen as an almost unfairly pejorative term. “He may be muscular and loud but he’s a kind, clever young man. It’s not like he’s a jock,” one might say, defensively, of a friendly jock in one’s life.(Adam Jacot de Boinod is the author of The Meaning of Tingo and Other Extraordinary Words from Around the World)