Where do the words 'nerd' and 'geek' come from?

sequoianoir

My dictionary has: GEEK - probably from English dialect geek, geck fool, from Low German geck from Middle Low German NERD - perhaps from nerd, a creature in the children's book If I Ran the Zoo (1950) by Dr. Seuss (Theodor Geisel) Date: 1951 Jan 18 03, 12:56 AM

Creedy

The first documented appearance of the word "nerd" is as the name of a creature in Dr. Seuss's book If I Ran the Zoo (1950), in which the narrator Gerald McGrew claims that he would collect "a Nerkle, a Nerd, and a Seersucker too" for his imaginary zoo. The slang meaning of the term dates back to 1951, when Newsweek magazine reported on its popular use as a synonym for "drip"; or "square" in Detroit, Michigan. By the early 1960s, usage of the term had spread throughout the United States and even as far as Scotland. At some point, the word took on connotations of bookishness and social ineptitude http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nerd This word comes from English dialect geek, geck: fool, freak; from Low German geck, from Middle Low German. The root geck still survives in Dutch and Afrikaans gek: crazy, as well as some German dialects, and in the Alsatian word Gickeleshut: geek's hat, used in carnivals http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geek Aug 21 10, 11:58 PM