weenie, wonkie (1955), wonk (1956)

[Fred Shapiro]

On Tue, 22 Feb 2005, Benjamin Zimmer wrote:

> OED2 has "weenie" in the 'nerd' sense from 1963 and "wonk" from 1962.  I
> believe Fred Shapiro has a 1954 cite for "wonk" from Time Magazine, though
> I can't find it in the archive.

My longstanding theory that the terms "preppie," "jock," and "wonk" all
had their origins in a traditional tripartite division of Harvard students
seems to be holding up pretty well, although the earliest Harvard usage of
"wonk" is not quite as old as the oldest known citation.  Incidentally, I
saw somewhere that subscribers to Time get access to a historical archive
of that magazine...

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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