OED Antedates "Nerd"

[Fred Shapiro]

A noteworthy item in the latest batch of OED revisions is the following
citation now listed as the first use for the word "nerd":

a1950 A. KAZIN Jrnl. in Lifetime Burning in Every Moment (1996) II. 92, I
guess to her I am a nerd, a bookish noodle, not genially at the heart of
things.

Since Dr. Seuss' naming of one of his fictional animals as a "nerd"
occurred in a 1950 book, the Kazin usage most likely kills the theory that
the slang word derives from Dr. Seuss.

Fred Shapiro


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Fred R. Shapiro                             Editor
Associate Librarian for Collections and     YALE DICTIONARY OF QUOTATIONS
  Access and Lecturer in Legal Research     Yale University Press,
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