what is the orgin of the word geek?

Answer 1

Eurkle

Answer 2

I'm not so sure you really want to know, but I'll tell you.
Our word geek is now chiefly associated with contemporary student and computer slang, as in computer geek. In fact, geek is first attested in 1876 with the meaning “fool,” and it later also came to mean “a performer engaging in bizarre acts like biting the head off a live chicken.” Perhaps the use of geek to describe a circus sideshow has contributed to its current popularity. The circus was a much more significant source of entertainment in the United States in the 19th and early 20th centuries than it is now, and large numbers of traveling circuses left a cultural legacy in various unexpected ways.

Answer 3

Geek is actually a very old word. It is a variant of geck, a term of Low German/Dutch origin that dates in English to 1511. It means a fool, simpleton, or dupe. Geck is even used by Shakespeare in Twelfth Night, V.i.:

Why haue you suffer'd me to be imprison'd. And made the most notorious gecke and gull That ere inuention plaid on?
The geek spelling is an American variation, even though Shakespeare uses the spelling geeke in Cymbeline V.iv., but this is probably just a misspelling. Geek first appears (outside the single Shakespearean usage) in 1876 America. American usage adds the connotation of offensive or undesirable to the original foolish and stupid sense. The Carnival sideshow sense appears in 1928.

Answer 4

The word geek is one that has had several meanings over the centuries, including meaning both a fool and a very smart person.

Answer 5

My younger brother and I were walking down a trail in Yellowstone Park. There was a bird....a rather large, scary looking bird ahead of us on a tree branch. As we slowly snuck by this enormous bird, my brother wispered, "Look at that geek".
He meant Beak, of course...

From then on I called him a "geek"...and that's exactly where the word came from.
This was in 1975

Answer 6

The term geek origonally applied to circus performers who would bite the head off of live animals on stage.

(Ozzie's stage antics made him a geek in his day as well, he would bite off a bat's head during his performances)

Answer 7

Etymology: probably from English dialect geek, geck fool, from Low German geck, from Middle Low German

Answer 8

Geekopholeous. It's Greek.

Answer 9

geekling... that is when someone is a baby geek
lol
jk
idk