Story Behind The Word

I’ve used the word geek like a zillion times and probably you have too. I was curious how it all started and what it actually means today. So, I thought it’d be great to do a little research on why “geek” is what it is now.

A majority of web definitions suggests that “geek” dates back to the 19th century.

The most popular and interesting definition that I found was a carnival slang. Geeks were carnival performers who would bite heads off live chickens as part of a show.

Imagine being able to do that! Some even add that geeks ate glass and live mice. Gradually, the word was applied to anyone who did bizarre tasks. The bottom line:  you’d be a geek if you do anything for a living – anything that’s considered odd and disgusting by the society.

But the word only became a popular term through William Gresham’s 1946 novel, “Nightmare Alley”. The novel told a story of carnival life; it was later made into a film starring Tyrone Power.

Geek was then finally adopted by the technical community – maybe computer programming was/is still considered a weird job and calling programmers geek made sense. But by 1990, geeks had won over many with their success from the dot-com bubble; and turned into a fashionable term. And while geek might still not be a cool term for kids, parents seem to have developed a strong liking. A few weeks ago, my colleague told me how she wants her children to be geeks, and with the following that geek dad (wired.com) has, you can sense that quite a number of parents are eager to raise geek children.

Credit:www.geekculture.com

Apparently, you don’t have to be a computer freak to be called a geek. If you are overly obsessed with something that is beyond normal social acceptance, you are a geek. You could be a history geek,  a video game geek, a comic book geek and so forth… I find this confusing though. If you are obsessed with fashion, could you be a fashion geek? Now maybe fashion does not get classified as not mainstream. But my geek is a tech geek so it makes things easier for me. I am going to keep this blog mainly focused on his obsession with programming and technology. I could also say he is a finance geek given his obsession with stocks. His interest for finance kind of sky rocketed after Lehman & WAMU fell last year and he’s been on his toes checking stocks and researching like crazy everyday. He’s convinced a few of his friends to invest in certain companies too, with reasons backed up by his pretty convincing arguments. I wasn’t too happy to see the ups and downs in our monthly finance charts but that’s a whole different story.

Here’s my  favorite definition of a geek  from the urban dictionary, I am pretty confident it was defined by a geek.

Geek: The people you pick on in high school and wind up working for as an adult

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