Meaning

noun an insignificant student who is ridiculed as being affected or boringly studious

noun an intelligent but single-minded expert in a particular technical field or profession

originUnknown. Attested since 1951 as US student slang. * Perhaps an alteration of nerts (“nuts", "crazy”); see references below. * The word, capitalized, appeared in 1950 in Dr. Seuss’s If I Ran the Zoo as the name of an imaginary animal: *: And then, just to show them, I’ll sail to Katroo / And bring back an It-Kutch, a Preep and a Proo, / A Nerkle, a Nerd and a Seersucker too! * Possibly a…

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 3.0