Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. (US, also geekette, geekoid, geke) a clumsy, eccentric or offensive person.

[1876		Whitby Gloss. n.p.: Gawk, Geek, Gowk or Gowky, a fool; a person uncultivated; a dupe].
1908		B. Fisher A. Mutt in Blackbeard Compilation (1977) 56: Beany claims that this geek invented the hole in the doughnut.
1911		L. Pound ‘A Second Word-List From Nebraska’ in DN III:vii 544: geke, n. Awkward fellow, guy. ‘Isn’t that fellow a queer, crazy geke?’.
1914		Ade ‘The New Fable of the Speedy Sprite’ in Ade’s Fables 25: Each [painting] looked as if executed with a Squirt Gun by a Nervous Geek on his way to a Three Days Cure.
1919		Wodehouse Damsel in Distress (1961) 24: The poor geek admitted they [i.e. songs] weren’t very tuney, but said the thing about his music was that it had such a wonderful aroma.
1922		(con. 1918–19) S.V. Benét Beginning of Wisdom 297: The geeks on the other side’ll be just as scared.
1930		G. Milburn ‘De Night Before Christmas’ in Hobo’s Hornbook 259: At last he looked up and he says to us geeks, / ‘I t’ink dat it’s time dat youse mugs beat yer sneaks’.
1949		‘F. Bonnamy’ Blood and Thirsty (1952) 201: ‘Old geeks,’ Al had called them.
1955		J.P. Donleavy Ginger Man (1958) 154: My God, I am indeed a cooked geek.
1963		A.S. Fleischman Venetian Blonde (2006) 190: The geek screwed down one eye and began to rumble.
1972		(con. 1930s) N. Algren ‘The Last Carousel’ in Texas Stories (1995) 144: Well, let the poor geek tell his sorry joke, I thought.
1984		Totally True Diaries of an Eighties Roller Queen 🌐 2 Sept. Now I have to tell Gary about Peter. It’ll be tense. But Gary’s hurtin’ anyway. I think he’s a geek.
1989		C. Hiaasen Skin Tight 134: A seven-foot, one-handed geek with Wite-Out painted on his face.
1993		Lerner et al. Dict. of Today’s Words 76: Geekoid – a socially insignificant or unattractive person.
1994		Warren G. ‘Regulate’ 🎵 But you can’t be any geek off the street. You gotta be handy with the steel if you know what I mean, earn your keep.
2000		Wylie ‘Lover Boy’ 🎵 You gimp you geek you frog you freak / You stink you’re slime you’re out of time.
2010		J. Ellroy Hilliker Curse 12: This geek Hank Hart was her first post-divorce squeeze.
2010		L. Redhead Thrill City [ebook] She intimidated the hell out of me [...] Next to her I was a bit of a geek. I had braces, mousy hair and was taller than everyone and flat as a tack.
2011		W.D. Myers Cruisers: Checkmate 97: The games moved along slowly, with the geeks and geekettes [...] playing them on their own chessboards.
2021		J. Ellroy Widespread Panic 7: Two men down. One traffic cop/one heist geek.

2. a carnival freak who specialized in biting the heads off live chickens or snakes, as well as various forms of painful self-mutilation (see cite 1996); also as attrib., v.

[1908		B. Fisher A. Mutt in Blackbeard Compilation (1977) 70: [illus. of sign on ‘sideshow’] Here! Here! Bosco Crawler. He eats ’em alive].
[1913		J. London Valley of the Moon (1914) 321: ‘Bosco. Remember him?’ ‘He eats ’em alive! He eats ’em alive! Bosco! Bosco!’ Saxon responded, mimicking the cry of a side-show barker].
1928		P.W. White ‘Lang. of the Lot’ AS III:5 414: Geek, a snake charmer .
1929		A.T. Rogers ‘Casual Observer’ in Charlotte Obs. (NC) 24 Feb. sect. 3 8/7: Fragments from the memory of a reformed carnival praise agent [...] Magimps...Geeks.
c.1930		N. Kimball Amer. Madam (1981) 175: I’ve known ‘depraved degenerates’ of the worst kind, from the geek who bites off the heads of live chickens in a circus sideshow, to the fiend who cuts up women.
1946		W.L. Gresham Nightmare Alley (1947) 2: The geek had picked up the black snake. [...] How do you ever get a guy to geek? [...] I mean, is a guy born that way – liking to bite the heads off chickens?
1956		H. Gold Man Who Was Not With It (1965) 103: They had a geek in the show, biting off chicken heads and rats, some poor boozer.
1965		Bob Dylan ‘Ballad of a Thin Man’ 🎵 You hand in your ticket and you go watch the geek.
1976		N. Thornburg Cutter and Bone (2001) 289: The sorriest show on earth, the kind of outfit that pulled into a town loaded into three or four battered trucks driven by geeks and bearded ladies.
1986		L. Heinemann Paco’s Story (1987) 3: A geek, James, is a carnival performer whose whole act consists of biting the head off a live chicken or a snake.
1991		B. Hamper Rivethead (1992) 8: He was like some dormant circus geek and he never even knew it.
1996		K. Silverman Houdini!!! 16: Diamond taught him ‘geek effects’ too, he later claimed, like [text from letter 31/07/1920] ‘sewing buttons on my bare chest, running needles through any part of my anatomy, without any preparation of the body, such as cocaine, morphine, etc., and not feeling the pain’ .
2001		‘Randy Everhard’ Tattoo of a Naked Lady 49: She gobbled me like a geek taking the head off a chicken.
2008		J. Lansdale Leather Maiden 124: ‘Reminded me of those old-time carnival geeks [...] Ones you put down in a hole and tossed a chicken [...] or something down there, and they’d [...] bite their heads off’.
2012		W. Keyser ‘Carny Lingo’ in http://goodmagic.com 🌐 Geek — An unskilled performer whose performance consists of shocking, repulsive and repugnant acts. This ‘lowest of the low’ member of the carny trade would commonly bite the head off a living chicken or snake.

3. a generally unpleasant person, irrelevant of class.

1949		Monteleone Criminal Sl. (rev. edn).
1953		W. Brown Monkey On My Back (1954) 141: Harlem roofs are infested by derelicts, drug addicts, geeks, fags, and muggers.
1986		L. Heinemann Paco’s Story (1987) 160: That geek may stop, slam his Buick in reverse, and back all the way up that ramp where you’re standing.
1990		S. Morgan Homeboy 33: The bentnosed geek seemed too relaxed.
2000		Guardian Rev. 11 Feb. 6: Shorthand for dweeb, geek, butthead and dipshit.
2023		(con. 1962) J. Ellroy Enchanters 13: Local press geeks would cosign El Jefe’s PR line.

4. (US black/teen) one who is considered intellectual and thus alien to the peer group, esp. an obsessive; also attrib.; thus geekware, clothing that appeals to such individuals.

1957		Kerouac letter 1 Oct. in Charters II (1999) 66: Brooklyn College wanted me to lecture to eager students and big geek questions to answer.
1986		C. Hiaasen Tourist Season (1987) 289: They’re full of geeks and cons and losers ... shit, if you threw them all together you’d have the scariest nest of bizarros.
1993		Tarantino & Avery Pulp Fiction [film script] 46: A blonde waitress [...] taking an order from a bunch of film geeks.
2000		Guardian G2 10 Feb. 17: A nerd is more bookish and introverted and a geek just loves technology, but could otherwise be normal.
2002		Observer 10 Mar. 12: There’s not enough black nerds. I am a geek and proud of it.

5. (US teen) a drunkard.

1961

W. Brown Girls on the Rampage 39: He specialized in rolling geeks (drunks).

6. (US campus) one who is considered to devote too much time to their books.

1980		E. Folb Runnin’ Down Some Lines 239: geek [...] 2. Studious person.
1989		J. Doyle College Sl. Dict. 🌐 throat [U. of Rochester] someone who lives in the library, a study-geek.
1999		Indep. Rev. 28 June 10: The round-shouldered geek or bespectacled girl.

7. (orig. US campus) a devotee of and expert in computers and computer-related culture; thus geekspeak, computer jargon; geekware, technology that appeals to such individuals; geekize, to render something thus appealing [specific ext. of sense 4].

1989		J. Doyle College Sl. Dict. 🌐 geek [U. of Chicago] what everyone calls each other whose usage frequency is inversely proportional to the number of days left in a given quarter.
1991		E. Raymond New Hacker’s Dict. 102: computer geek n. One who eats (computer) bugs for a living. One who fulfills all the dreariest negative stereotypes about hackers: an asocial, malodorous, pasty-faced monomaniac with all the personality of a cheese grater.
2000		N.Y. Times 27 June n.p.: Geek-speak conjures up a chilly, utilitarian world in which people are equated with machines and social Darwinism rules.
2003		N.Y. Times 19 Jan. Business 19: Fossil Inc. [...] say their mission is to geekize fashion wear – that is, to make watches that look good and just happen to contain a computer.
2012		R. Milward Kimberly’s Capital Punishment (2023) 219: Yakuza, motorcycle gangs and otaku killer geeks.
2016		V. McDermid Out of Bounds (2017) 89: Random posts by conspiracy theorists, aviation geeks.
2017		T. Pluck Bad Boy Boogie [ebook] ‘Your phone’s with our forensics geek’.
2019		P. Temple ‘High Art’ in The Red Hand 33: The place would now be infested with pallid techno-geeks and geekesses busily inventing applications.

8. as suffix, denoting a peculiar or extreme interest in, fondness for, the matter specified.

1999

D. Lehane Prayers for Rain 114: ‘Okay,’ he said, getting excited now that he’d found a fellow cine-geek.