"nerd" etymythology

[Wilson Gray]

On Sun, Aug 14, 2011 at 7:57 AM, Garson O'Toole
<adsgarsonotoole at gmail.com> wrote:
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> Sender: Â  Â  Â  American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster: Â  Â  Â  Garson O'Toole <adsgarsonotoole at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject: Â  Â  Â Re: "nerd" etymythology
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> 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
> Jig[g]s 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_

_P.H.A.T.T._ is still being misspelled, I see.

A WAG: _fat_ was given an artificial reanalysis in order to prevent
its sounding like an insult, when it was applied to girls.


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_

And not "_the_ MOST"?

> Everybody from Jelly-tots to Cool Jonahs gets a big
> tickle from Hoffman's threads. These suits are really

_made in the shade_

An unusual use, IME.

> 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/
>>
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--
-Wilson
-----
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint
to come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-Mark Twain

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