"nerd" etymythology

[Garson O'Toole]

I have located the 1952 cartoon in Collier's magazine that uses the
word nerd and numerous other slang terms. As Ben noted the vocabulary
items apparently were based on the October 1951 Newsweek article. I
also located the reprint of the cartoon in Collier's that appeared
with a news item about the reaction to the cartoon.

Cite: 1952 February 2, Collier's, [free standing cartoon by John
Norment surrounded by an unrelated article with the page title "But
Jigs and Maggie Are in Love"], Page 39, Crowell-Collier Pub. Co.
(Verified on paper)

[Cartoon by John Norment depicts a radio announcer with three pages of
typescript speaking into a microphone labeled with the letters B A C.
Behind the announcer is another figure in the control booth. The
caption is given below.]

"You'll get a large charge from Hoffman's Teen-Age Clothes. So get on
the stick with these real fat, real cool, really crazy clothes. Don't
be a Party-Pooper or a nerd. Yes, everybody is bashing ears about
Hoffman's Teen-Age Clothes. They're Frampton. They're pash-pie.
They're MOST! Everybody from Jelly-tots to Cool Jonahs gets a big
tickle from Hoffman's threads. These suits are really made in the
shade, and when your Dolly, or double bubble, sees you wearing a
Hoffman she'll give you an approving Mother Higby and say, 'That has
it !'. So don't get squishy and be a schnookle. The geetafrate is
reasonable and we'll make it Chili for you. Remember, don't be an odd
ball. The name is Hoffman's Teen-Age Clothes"

[The text above is corrected OCR but errors are difficult to avoid.]


Cite: 1952 September 6, Collier's, [Cartoon by John Norment together
with a short news item], Page 6, Crowell-Collier Pub. Co. (Verified on
paper)

[Cartoon and caption are reprinted followed by a letter.]

EDITOR: John Norment's recent Collier's cartoon of a bald-headed
announcer reading a satirical radio commercial on Hoffman's Teen-Age
Clothes had radio station WKY, Oklahoma City, going round in circles.

It started when WKY disk jockey Tom Paxton commented on the cartoon
and read part of it on his show. The transmitter engineer, hearing a
trade name, logged it as a commercial. The accounting department, on
receipt of the log, tried to track down the "Hoffman" account so it
could bill them. When no such account was located, Paxton was called
on the carpet for giving an unauthorized commercial.

He rescued himself by producing the cartoon.

RAY SCALES, WKY & WKY-TV, Oklahoma City, Okla.


Garson O'Toole wrote on July 18, 2011
>> I have extracted some more text from the Collier's in GB. Apparently,
>> the word "nerd" appeared in an earlier issue of Collier's in a
>> "cartoon of a bald-headed announcer reading a satirical radio
>> commercial on Hoffman's Teen-Age Clothes."
...

Ben Zimmer wrote on July 18, 2011
> This is still chiefly relying on that Oct. 28, 1951 Newsweek article
> on regional teen slang picked up by Reader's Digest and other
> publications. Newsweek said that "frampton" was "Salt Lake's highest
> accolade," while "nerd" was identified as Detroit slang. And
> "pash-pie" is "a dream man or girl who is probably Most (sexy)" (in
> Boston), so the Hoffman ad-writers seem to have misunderstood that
> one.
>
> Newsweek had "fat" too: "Discussing cool and the degrees of coolness,
> one boy reported: 'If you like a guy or gal, they're cool. If they are
> real fat, real crazy, naturally they're real cool.'" I don't have my
> slang dictionaries at hand, but I see Kipfer and Chapman cited this in
> the entry for "fat" in their Dictionary of American Slang, and it also
> shows up in OED's "cool" entry.
>
> --bgz
>
> --
> Ben Zimmer
> http://benzimmer.com/
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org