geek1
/ɡiːk
/informal
noun
1An unfashionable or socially inept person.His attempts to play a socially inept geek are awkward....
- They weren't even socially dysfunctional geeks.
- They were a group made up mostly of men who were all nerds and geeks and dorks in high school who went on to become brilliant and funny and irresistible in college.
1.1 [usually with modifier] A knowledgeable and obsessive enthusiast: a computer geek...
- I've also been a computer geek hobbyist for about 20 years, but I couldn't program or solder my way out of a paper bag.
- Wine tasters have their own vocabulary or jargon, just like other groups of enthusiasts: computer geeks, ballroom dancers, etc.
- I responded in a manner befitting a grown adult and fellow professional in the computer geek press.
verb [no object] (geek out)
1Engage in or discuss computer-related tasks obsessively or with great attention to technical detail: we all geeked out for a bit and exchanged ICQ/MSN/AOL/website information keep it simple or geek out and create multiple playlists on the move...
- With this summer's hot gadgets, you can geek out on the go.
- Of course, I geeked out on some of the mechanisms.
- They also offer computer video game trailers from time to time, so you can fully geek out if you need to.
1.1Be or become extremely excited or enthusiastic about a subject, typically one of specialist or minority interest: I am totally geeking out over this upcoming film...
- I have been geeking out on campus politics for years.
- A pair of superb documentaries offers visitors to Harbourfront Centre's Beats, Breaks & Culture festival of electronic music a chance to geek out whenever they're not enslaved to rhythms elsewhere.
- I usually tune into a show only after my critic chums have geeked out over it so often that I feel naked without an opinion.
Derivatives
geekdom
- Given how critical your choice of operating system is, only a buffoon would act on the word of the massed ranks of geekdom or, indeed, the inflated opinions of an itinerant scribe.
- I hereby declare myself a fully paid up member of computer geekdom.
- Comic fandom is something I am very comfortable with (I come a branch of geekdom that speaks a different dialect, but there is still mutual intelligibility).
geekish
- They complained that the commentators often seemed to be making fun of the geekish enthusiasms of the operators.
- Also female learners can find it difficult to engage with the seemingly geekish male culture of computer games.
- Whether white and sticky or plastic and magnetic, there is just something so mortifyingly geekish about wearing a name tag.
Origin
Late 19th century: from the related English dialect word geck 'fool', of Germanic origin; related to Dutch gek 'mad, silly'.
This is originally US slang from the related English dialect word geck ‘fool’, from a Germanic source. It is related to Dutch gek ‘mad, silly’. In Webster's New International Dictionary of the English Language of 1954, the definition read: Geek, a carnival ‘wild man' whose act usually includes biting off the head of a live chicken or snake’.
Rhymes
geek2
/ɡiːk/noun Australian /NZ informal
A look: there was a lot I wanted to have a geek at
Origin
Early 20th century: from Scots and northern English dialect geck 'toss the head scornfully'.