Deep-Fried Air (Rebroadcast) - 26 December 2022
A Way with Words - language, linguistics, and callers from all over
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What's on Your Mind?
John Coons: My mother used to call us kids nerds and I always thought that that was a word that she made up but of course as a teenager I tuned into happy days and pops out of time these months. nerd meaning somebody who's unfashionable or uncool dates back to early 1950s the earliest print use is is 1951 but there's an asterisk to that is that in 1950 the word nerd is used in a Dr. Seuss book we don't know word researchers and etymologist if Dr. SeUSS is the origin of the slang nerd.
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