Collegiate "geek" in the '70s (was Re: Synonymy avoidance)

[Wilson Gray]

I'm afraid that you're just too young, Ben. If you'd been around in
the '40's and '50's, said ruination of a perfectly good word would
trigger a slight feeling of annoyance every time that you came across
it in its new (to you) usage.

-Wilson

>---------------------- Information from the mail header
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>Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>Poster:       Benjamin Zimmer <bgzimmer at RCI.RUTGERS.EDU>
>Subject:      Re: Collegiate "geek" in the '70s (was Re: Synonymy avoidance)
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>
>On Fri, 11 Mar 2005 08:47:54 -0600, Sally O. Donlon <sod at LOUISIANA.EDU>
>wrote:
>
>>I told my middle school daughter and her friends about the geek
>>reference to biting off chicken heads and they were not only grossed
>>out, but heavily offended because to them it means the
>>really-smart-kid-who-may-be-uncool-now-but-who-everyone-knows-will-
>>grow-up-to-be-another-Bill-Gates.
>
>As a reasonably well-read child in the '70s and '80s, I hardly ever came
>across the carnival-performer sense of "geek".  I remember being a little
>perplexed when I listened carefully to Bob Dylan's "Ballad of a Thin Man":
>
>You hand in your ticket
>And you go watch the geek
>Who immediately walks up to you
>When he hears you speak
>And says, "How does it feel
>To be such a freak?"
>And you say, "Impossible"
>As he hands you a bone.
>
>That was probably my first exposure to the term.  Later on I heard it in
>the Ramones song "I'm Against It" (from their 1978 _Road to Ruin_ album):
>"I don't like Jesus freaks, I don't like circus geeks."  And I think I
>came across the expression "geek show", though it wasn't clear to me that
>it meant anything different from "freak show".  (My primary source of
>knowledge on old-fashioned circus freaks, Tod Browning's cult film
>_Freaks_, did not feature any chicken-head-biting geeks, to the best of my
>recollection.)
>
>
>--Ben Zimmer