wonk as a verb

[Jesse Sheidlower]

On Fri, Jun 27, 2008 at 09:48:11AM -0600, Mark Davies wrote:
> >> Now antedated to 1954 in Time (but not in the BYU Time Corpus?):
>
> Yes, it's there, but I was just looking for [wonk] as a verb in the corpus. As far as other early noun uses:
>
> "it has proved to many an American that he has a wonky (feeble) vocabulary. Confronted by too many x's or z's"  (1954. Apr 26)
>

This seems more likely to be what OED calls _wonky_ adj.(1),
"Of a thing: faulty, unsound; unreliable" with quotes to 1923
(and not recently researched so presumably antedatable). The
earliest quote for _wonky_ adj.(2), the 'nerdy' sense, is
1978.

Jesse Sheidlower
OED

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