Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. (also technico) a technician; also attrib.

1969		Harvard Crimson 7 Mar. 🌐 The audience at a Harvard show is pretty unaware of techies--the backstage and front office people who organize, frame and run a production--except as names on the right hand side of a program.
1977		J. Sayles Union Dues (1978) 135: He helped with the equipment and all, a techie.
1978		S. King Stand (1990) 798: I think he’s going to get most of the techies [...] tech people like to work in an atmosphere of tight discipline.
1982		S. King Running Man in Bachman Books (1995) 567: Some technico’s airbrush.
1991		B. McCarthy Vice Cop 204: There was no possibility of sending in the troops—all the usual techie people who show up with step-vans and trailers and transformers on wheels.
2006		G. Pelecanos Night Gardener 67: Holiday looked [...] slightly more hip than the techies around him.
2009		P. Temple Truth 225: I thought the techies has taken a girl look.

2. a computer enthusiast or expert.

2000

Guardian G2 6 Jan. 17: Embraced by techies and musicians alike, it turned geeks into rock stars.

3. technology; usu. attrib.

1998		McCaffrey & Ball Acorna 210: Strange kind of furry stockings the girl wore under her skirts . . . some new techie fashion, no doubt.
2000		Indep. on Sun. Real Life 23 Jan. 3: Reebok enters the techie race with a built-in pump.
2008		G. Dozois Year’s Best Science Fiction 631: This was a semi-new techie product, snug and light, and he wanted to try them. The shorts were black, the cheapest spray-on, with spaced breather holes.

4. (US black) someone who first steals one’s possessions and then displays them openly.

2000

Ebonics Primer at www.dolemite.com 🌐 techies Definition: all them brothers that be stealin yo shit, then usin it right in front of you like it was theirs. Example: Them techies was over here last night playin tha CD’s they stole from me last week.