At our dinner after training tonight, we discussed the differences among dorks, geeks and nerds.
Someone offered that geeks are normally self-proclaimed but dorks are not. People call you a dork but you don't do that to yourself. So how come Kung Fu Dorks? I am quite proud to call myself a dork... I thought dork had this kind of cutesy and innocent connotation.
So I did some research...
According to Dictionary.com, dork got the worst meaning - someone stupid and ridiculous. Nerd is a little better - it can mean an unattractive stupid person or an intelligent but single-minded person. Geek is not much better - referring to a peculiar or otherwise dislikable person especially overly intellectual one.
So it seems like geeks and nerds are quite intelligent but dorks are not.
This is not good.
Maybe some other dictionaries will agree better with me. So I tried UrbanDictionary.com.
It said a dork is someone with odd interests and often silly. I like that! The second entry for geek (didn't like the first entry so ignored it) said that a geek is basically a person who is highly knowledgable with technology. Cool. And a nerd is someone extremely smart.
Ah hah!
Thus - Kung Fu Dorks are people with an (odd) interest in Kung Fu who at times are silly (in a good way).
if you look at the definition of dork in urban dictionary, it also says "a dork is also someone who can be themselves and not care what anyone thinks." And, "they tend to be more humorous and extroverted and don't mind laughing at themselves or with others at themselves."
ReplyDeleteyup, that's us!
besides, there's already a kung fu geeks page! :O
ReplyDeletei read comic books and don't care who knows, I also don't need to call them "graphic novels".
ReplyDeleteyeah dorks!!
we actually discussed this a wee bit when we first started up this blog in these comments.
ReplyDeleteI like all three from urbandictionary.com :D
ReplyDeletei like sucheela's choice of graphic, especially ralph!
ReplyDeleteactually ellen picked all those images and put them there - I can't take credit for it
ReplyDeleteor
maybe I WILL
muahahahaha
i think i was going for a charlie's angels type arrangement...or maybe i just like how the yellow of their skin matches our blog.
ReplyDeletedoes this look like me: Simpsons Qbertplaya?
Geek has origins in a term for circus freaks. I think we're a little dorky, but not freaks... Well, not all of us anyways...
ReplyDeleteSome interesting facts about these words!!
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NERD
The word nerd, undefined but illustrated, first apeared in 1950 in Dr. Seuss's If I Ran the Zoo:
"And then, just to show them, I'll sail to Ka-Troo And Bring Back an It-Kutch a Preep and a Proo A Nerkle a Nerd and a Seersucker, too!" (The nerd is small humanoid creature looking comically angry, like a thin, cross Chester A. Arthur.)
Nerd next appears, with a gloss, in the February 10, 1957, issue of the Glasgow, Scotland, Sunday Mail in a regular column entitled "ABC for SQUARES":
"Nerd--a square, any explanation needed?"
Many of the terms defined in this "ABC" are unmistakable Americanisms, such as hep, ick, and jazzy, as is the gloss "square," the current meaning of nerd. The third appearance of nerd in print is back in the United States in 1970 in Current Slang: "Nurd[sic], someone with objectionable habits or traits... An uninteresting person, a 'dud.'" Authorities disagree on whether the two nerds - Dr. Seuss's small creature and the teenage slang term in the Glasgow Sunday Mail -- are the same word. Some experts claim there is no semantic connection and the identity of the words is fortuitous. Others maintain that Dr. Seuss is the true originator of nerd and that the word nerd ("comically unpleasant creature") was picked up by the five- and six-year-olds of 1950 and passed on to their older siblings, who by 1957, as teenagers, had restricted and specified the meaning to the most comically obnoxious creature of their own class, a "square."
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GEEK
[Perhaps alteration of dialectal geck, fool, from Low German gek, from Middle Low German.]
The word geek is now chiefly associated with student and computer slang; one probably thinks first of a computer geek. In origin, however, it is one of the words American English borrowed from the vocabulary of the circus, which was a much more significant source of entertainment in the United States in the 19th and early 20th century than it is now. Large numbers of traveling circuses left a cultural legacy in various and sometimes unexpected ways. For example, Superman and other comic book superheroes owe much of their look to circus acrobats, who were similarly costumed in capes and tights. The circus sideshow is the source of the word geek, "a performer who engaged in bizarre acts, such as biting the head off a live chicken." We also owe the word ballyhoo to the circus; its ultimate origin is unknown, but in the late 1800s it referred to a flamboyant free musical performance conducted outside a circus with the goal of luring customers to buy tickets to the inside shows. Other words and expressions with circus origins include bandwagon (coined by P.T. Barnum in 1855) and Siamese twin.
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DORK
[Perhaps from dork, variant of dirk]
dirk - n. A dagger
Also known as a surname. Ellis Island records indicate people registering as early as 1907 with Dork as their last name.
Ellis Is. Records
hehehehe...remember mark wahlberg as dirk diggler in boogie nights? hehehehehe...he would practice karate chops in the mirror in the bathroom.
ReplyDeleteLOL! I have a level 3 thief who throws dirks for 1-6 HP of damage.
ReplyDeleterob, that is such a dorky/geeky comment, i can't even begin to understand what you mean! :)
ReplyDelete