Wednesday, December 24, 2008

Geek or Nerd

I was introducing my coworker, Ed, to Joanie and Spencer. I described him as a nerd with no intended insult. We discussed which is better, nerd or geek. I've always thought nerd meant uber-smart with some social ineptness and geek was uber-inept with some smarts (the showerless guys that carried around their upteen-sided dice hoping for a pick-up game of D&D). The group consensus was that I had it backwards.

freedictionary has identical first definitions for geek and nerd.
Webster has a more favorable definition for geek.

So which is it?

4 comments:

Suzy Riddle said...

I'm with you. That's always been my definition too.

Evenstar said...

You'll always be a nerd to me Marshall.

Karen said...

I've always thought geek was the nicer term. I don't know I think all my brothers are nerds or geeks or something....

Seventh Child said...

I'm a fan for nerd myself.