Geek

Geek (noun) [probably from English dialect geek, geck fool, from Low German geck, from Middle Low German; First appeared 1914]: a person often of an intellectual bent who is disapproved of. 2. a carnival performer often billed as a wild man whose act usually includes biting the head off a live chicken or snake.

- Merriam-Webster Dictionary

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Computer geek n. 1. 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 there personality of a cheese grater. Cannot be used by outsiders without implied insult to all hackers; compare black-on-black vs. white-on-black usage of "nigger." A computer geek may be either a fundamentally clueless individual or a protohacker in larval stage. Also called turbo nerd, turbo geek. See also propeller head, clustergeeking, geek out, wannabee, terminal junkie, spod, weenie. 2. Some self-described computer geeks use this term in a positive sense and protest sense (this seems to have been a post-1990 development.)

- Eric S. Raymond

The New Hacker's Dictionary

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Geek: A person who, for one reason or another, is considered socially unacceptable by the person speaking. A computer geek is someone who is socially inept but expert with computers. As computers become more important in the average person's life, this term becomes more often a compliment than an insult.

- Mike McConnell

High-Tech Dictionary

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Geek: Short for computer geek, an individual with a passion for computers, to the exclusion of other normal human interests. Depending on the context, it can be used in either a derogatory or affectionate manner. Basically, geek and nerd are synonymous.

- Webopedia

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Geek: Encarta Encyclopedia found no matches for: GEEK

- Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia

1998 Edition

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Geek: A member of the new cultural elite, a pop-culture-loving, techno-centered Community of Social Discontents. Most geeks rose above a suffocatingly unimaginative educational system, where they were surrounded by obnoxious social values and hostile peers, to build the freest and most inventive culture on the planet: the Internet and World Wide Web. Now running the systems that run the world.

Tendency toward braininess and individuality, traits that often trigger resentment, isolation, or exclusion. Identifiable by a singular obsessiveness about the things they love, both work and play, and a well-honed sense of bitter, even savage, outsider humor. Universally suspicious of authority. In this era, the Geek Ascension, a positive, even envies term. Definitions involving chicken heads no longer apply.

- Jon Katz

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The last definition is by the author of a book I just started reading. Obviously titled "Geeks," I bought it mainly for that reason and because I fit well in a combination of the above definitions, although more recently I prefer being called a Nerd :D