Dictionary discussions of 'nerd/nurd'
The term nerd (or nurd) doesn't appear in Harold Wentworth & Stuart Flexner, Dictionary of American Slang, first edition (1960), but this entry appears in Wentworth & Flexner, Dictionary of American Slang, supplemented edition (1967):
nerd [or] nurd n. A contemptible, undesirable, or unpleasant person, esp. one who is not in the know; a "square." 1965: "Nurd a person who is not in the know, a square, not hip."Tom Medley, Hot Rod Jargon. Teenage use.
J.E. Lighter, Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang (1997) propounds the If I Ran the Zoo theory but also floats an alternative influence that is even earlier. Here is Lighter's entry, including its earliest antecedent cites and same-sense citations:
nerd n. {prob. suggested by the nerd, whimsical creature in If I Ran the Zoo (1950) by "Dr. Seuss" (Theodore Seuss Geisel (1904–91), U.S. children's author, itself perh. infl. by Mortimer Snerd, name of dummy used by Edgar Bergen, U.S. ventriloquist} 1. Stu. a dull, obnoxious, or unattractive person; DRIP [in the sense of "an obnoxious, esp. a tedious, person"]; JERK. Also, nurd. Also as quasi-adj. {The 1957 quot., though from a Glasgow newspaper, seems likely to have been copied fr. a U.S. source.} [First listed antecedents and instances:] {1941 in C.R. Bond & T.Anderson Flying T. Diary 43: I discussed the P-40 flying characteristics with "Mortimer Snerd" Shilling.} {1950 "Dr. Seuss" If I Ran the Zoo 49: I'll sail to Ka-troo/ And bring back an It-Kutch, a Preep, and a Proo, a Nerkle, a Nerd, and a Seersucker too!} 1951 ([first occurrence date] cited in W10 [Merriam-Webster's Eleventh Collegiate Dictionary tenth edition (1993)]) 1957 in OED2: Nerd—a square. 1960 Yale Record (Oct.) 11: Ah, get outta here, nurd. 1960 Swarthout Where the Boys Are 45: Malcolm was a real nurd. 1961 Kohner Gidget Goes Hawaiian 22: He was a real nurd. 1961 Sullivan Shortest Gladdest Years 307: He was a whey-faced little nerd. ...
2. Stu. an overdiligent student; (hence) a person obsessively devoted to a (usu. specified) nonsocial activity. [first citation is to a 1974 interview with a University of Tennessee professor, "age *ca*38": "In the late 1950's, at St. Olaf College [in Northfield, Minnesota] a 'grind' was also referred to as a nerd. Because so many students were of Scandinavian ancestry the phrase Nordic nerd was also used. I had never heard nerd before that."
According to the Muppet Wiki article on Mortimer Snerd, the dim-bulb ventriloquist dummy debuted on The Chase & Sanborne Hour (a radio program) in 1938. You can see him in action in the movie You Can't Cheat an Honest Man (1939) and on an unidentified TV show (1950).
Max Cryer, Common Phrases: And the Amazing Stories Behind Them (2010) views the theory that Seuss is the source of nerd in its modern slang sense as being beyond question:
The first known appearance of the word nerd in print—which launched its growth into international use—was in the story If I Ran The Zoo (1950), by children's author Dr. Seuss, in which a character proclaims:
I'll sail to Ka-Troo And Bring Back an It-Kutch, a Preep and a Proo, A Nerkle, a Nerd, and a Seersucker, too!
The story was illustrated with a grumpy looking android not particular about personal grooming.
A glossary entry for nurd in Raymond Buckley, When Better Women Are Made (1967) as this entry for nurd:
A nurd. For all practical purposes a nurd is equivalent to a weeny. I'm afraid I cannot discriminate them further.
Database matches for 'nerd/nurd'
Glendon Swarthout, Where the Boy Are (1960), cited in the Lighter entry for nerd above, reads in context as follows [combined snippets]:
Malcolm made love with surprising savoir-faire, which might have been due to many hours of practice on the clarinet; I have heard trombone players are best because they develop a terrific lip; and when we were both breathing hard and I had given him every sign the supply was equal to the demand, to use economic terms, he inquired if I was a virgin and when I responded in the affirmative to my consternation he leaped up, righted his disarray, and in a spasm of boyish emotion swore that he would never, never be the one to send an innocent girl down the road to ruin. That damn boy was an idealist! Round and round we went, up the walls and over the furniture. I used every argument which had been employed upon me in the dark of night, I played Tschaikovsky's Francesca da Rimini on the hi-fi, I coaxed him into smoking a cigarette and slugging down a shot of my father's sloe gin, but to utterly no avail. Malcolm was a real nurd. In the end he said he was saving himself for marriage, and broke it up by leaving. I could have hit him with a lamp. In a perverted sense it was the most immoral, not to say humiliating, evening in my recollection.
The earliest valid match for nurd in an Elephind search is from "24 Games Open IM Basketball," in the [Washington, D.C.] Hoya (December 10, 1959), Georgetown University's student newspaper:
The Intramural Basketball League got underway last week with a total of twenty-four games being played at McDonough Gym.
In the AAA League, the defending champion Big Muvas, the Eglags, and Legal Eagles grabbed initial wins over the Grendels, Nurds, and Prefects.
Kevin Hennessy scored 13 to pace the Muvas to a 44-34 win over the Grendels, while Joe DiMare's 16 led the fast breaking Eglags to a 62-32 win over the Nurds.
And from Carl Langley, "Frat Chat: IFC Leadership Conference, Rho Tau on Agenda for This Weekend," in the [Richmond, Virginia] Collegian (March 10, 1961), the student newspaper of the University of Richmond:
"Jenerous Jim" struck again so say the Nurd, Mr. Infallible, and the Gap. Another big weekend at home, Dwight? This was a big weekend for the Mole, also, and on his birthday too.
The earliest Elephind match for "a nerd" is from Deb Stoddard, "Fastly Foibles," in the [State College, Pennsylvania] Daily Collegian (January 6, 1965), the student newspaper of Pennsylvania State University:
Life may be real, earnest and measured out in coffee spoons but it just ain't deserving of some of the slang quoted by Time [magazine]. I don't believe it!
Here are some examples.
Penn State's pet, the rat fink, is R.F. at Southern Cal and "mouse fink" at ivy-bound Harvard.
At the University of North Carolina you can't even be that detestible beast, the fink. You are either a squid, a cull, a troll or a nerd. How degrading is that?
The use of snerd as a descriptive term occurs in "Edgar Bergen Broadcasts from Racquet Club: Celebrities Guests on Last Show," in the [Palm Springs, California] Desert Sun (February 24, 1955) but not elsewhere in the Elephind database in that capacity during the 1950s and 1960s:
Johnny Mercer, who has written so many Hit Parade songs and is up for an Academy Award for his score for "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers," sang an impromptu composition in his TV style, and met Mortimer Snerd. Mortimer, of course, made "snerd" remarks that added to the fun.
Conclusions
The slang term nerd/nurd has been use since the late 1950s at least as student slang referring to a boring, conventional, unimaginative, tedious, twerpy person who is averse to doing anything the least bit wild or daring.
The connection of that term to the term nerd in Dr. Seuss's If I Ran the Zoo (as a nonsense name of one of the many imaginary creatures that Gerald McGrew would popular his zoo with) is far from obvious. It bears noticing that Dr. Seuss wrote quite a few books that focused on page after page of exotic animals and their extraordinary habits, including If I Ran the Circus, Happy Birthday to You (which is set in Katroo, the alleged home [rendered as Ka-Troo] of the It-Kutch, Preep, Proo, Nerkle, Nerd, and Seersucker in If I Ran the Zoo), On Beyond Zebra, McElligot's Pool, Scrambled Eggs Super, and One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish.
Under the circumstances it would be rather surprising if none of Seuss's made-up creature names didn't also appear as slang words. The trick is to identify a direct connection between the word from Seuss and the word as used by (in this case) college kids, hot-rodders, and beach blanket bingoers.
In this regard, I am very skeptical of the claimed paternity. You can see what the Nerd looks like in If I Ran the Zoo at 9:12 of this YouTube video; and Max Cryer's gloss on its appearance notwithstanding, it doesn't look particularly nerdy to me. In fact the closest passing resemblance it bears to a humanoid is to Yosemite Sam, who isn't a nerd by any rational measure.
Another problem for the Seuss source theory is that most of the early Google Books and Elephind database matches that I found for the slang term spell the word nurd; so proponents of the Seuss hypothesis must argue that people remembered the name nerd and what the creature looked like from a spread it shared with five other made-up animals in a book full of other made-up animals with outlandish names, but most of those people didn't remember how Dr Seuss spelled it.
I am much more inclined to accept that the name of Edgar Bergen's second-banana ventriloquist's dummy, Mortimer Snerd, influenced the emergence of nerd as a slang term for a kind of lame doofus (which Snerd certainly was). But even that possibility is far from obvious.
The pool of single-syllable English-sounding words that seem cute or appealing or appropriately disparaging for slang coinages is perhaps smaller than people tend to think. Consider the foam material dubbed Nerf, which, according to its Wikipedia entry, is an acronym for non-expanding recreational foam. Although that sense of Nerf originated in 1969 or 1970, Wadsworth & Flexner's 1960 Dictionary of American Slang includes an entry for a very different kind of nerf:
nerf v.t. To push one car with another. Hot-rod use since c1955. From the nerfing bar that supports the bumper on most cars.
Regrettably, Wadsworth & Flexner left the etymology of nerfing bar untraced—although a now-obsolete meaning of nerf in use until the 16th century or so was "sinew"—so who knows. Anyway, nerf and Nerf arose within 15 years of each other and yet appear to be completely unrelated. I would not be shocked if the same turned out to be true of Dr. Seuss's zoo-ready nerd and the socially inept nerd/nurd of the late 1950s to the present.
I puritani hanno fatto furore! (I Puritani was a big hit!)
After the premiere of his opera I puritani at the Comédie Italienne in Paris, 24 Jan. 1835, the composer Vincenzo Bellini wrote to a friend:
«Mi trovo all’apice del contento! Sabato sera è stata la prima rappresentazione dei Puritani: ha fatto furore, che ancora ne sono io stesso sbalordito… Il gaio, il tristo, il robusto dei pezzi, tutto è stato marcato dagli applausi, e che applausi, che applausi».
I am at the peak of happiness! Saturday evening was the first performance of I puritani: it was a sensation (lit. ‘made furor’), which I myself still find astonishing ... The joy, the sadness, the strength of the pieces — all were marked with bursts of applause, and what applause, what applause. — Vincenzo Bellini to Francesco Florimo, 1835.
In Bellini’s day, the theater slang expression fare furore, along with others drawn from the opera and theater, had slowly been making its way into general language use in Italy, where it is still current today. The earliest attestation of the phrase, however, had a completely different meaning:
JABRA Turco, eßendo in Ghetto, faceua un gran furore contro d’uno Hebreo…
In the ghetto, Jabra the Turk committed a serious assault against a Jew. — Anton Francesco Doni, La Zucca (Favola XXI 1), 1565.
Metaphorical violence, insanity, or anger is hardly alien to designations of popularity: consider a smash hit that’s now all the rage among its fan(atic)s who are absolutely crazy for it. In fact, in the early 19th century, if an opera wasn‘t an immediate furore, but was growing in popularity, it could be said to “attack.”
I could not determine from any online source exactly when the theatrical expression arose, but I suspect it was sometime after the mid-17th century dominance of commercial opera houses in Italy, when having a hit production didn’t merely add to fame but also fortune. Opera as popular entertainment was no small industry: Venice alone would boast of eleven opera houses; in Purcell’s London, there were none.
I also doubt —despite Bellini’s mentioning fare furore in the same breath as thunderous applause — that there was much metaphorical or associative force left in the Italian expression beyond a general notion of enthusiastic excitement. The mid-19th century coining of the verb furoreggiare with the identical meaning efficiently removes itself even further from any whiff of frenzied violence.
Many in Bellini’s Paris audience were familiar with the expression in its calqued French version, faire fureur, and that very year, it was defined in the sixth edition of Le Dictionnaire de l'Académie française as “said of a person or thing that is strongly en vogue, that excites in the public a great eagerness, a lively curiosity.”
In 1784, a German writer (Magazin der Musik 2, 563) cites an entire sentence in Italian, “Ma non fece furore” (But he wasn‘t a hit) because he finds the expression so characteristic of opera audiences in Italy and of the Italian mentality in general.The loud, boisterous, and furiously enthusiastic nature of such audiences will play a role in the English use of furore, which, unlike the French and German usage, has more interest in the noun than the entire phrase. Furore machen, however, begins to appear in 1830 as a fully German expression in the works of Heinrich Heine and Hermann von Pückler-Muskau and is still current today — along with its evil Italian twin, fare fiasco, Fiasko (machen), to be a total flop.
England
Despite the early lack of a dedicated opera venue and a resident company that only lasted eight years, England was not an opera wasteland. Travelling companies from Italy or Germany might remain in the country for extended stays, and the sons of aristocrats or wealthy businessmen would encounter opera in France or Italy as part of their “Grand Tour.” Musical journals would also report on productions in Italy and elsewhere.
While the online Etymological Dictionary and others suggest a 1790 appearance of furore in English, I have been unable to verify the date. Given the relative lack of online resources before 1800, that is hardly surprising. The first attestation I was able to find was in a newspaper article — not from a London paper, but Bristol:
The furore which this piece excited, was not confined [to a] few individuals, but was general throughout the whole assembly. — Bristol Mirror, 11 Dec. 1819.
Unlike the German and French expressions, furore appears without the bland causative, the emotional quality enhanced by the verb ‘excite’. The focus is on the enthusiastic response of the audience, efficiently including the applause of Bellini’s letter. This piece of music was surely the hit of the evening, but readers are left with the sounds and motion an audience member would have experienced first hand.
This usage also assumes that enough readers of this Bristol newspaper were both interested in the local cultural scene and knew the word or at least had heard it before. There must be some London history hiding within.
This history becomes more visible in 1824:
... its close was followed by a degree of enthusiastic applause, which raised the idea of an Italian audience tutto furore, ln fact, it was one of the finest instrumental achievements we ever heard in our national Theatres. — Morning Post (London), 15 Oct. 1824.
All was enthusiasm! tutto furore, to use the terms of that expressive language, which seems to have been created for the use of the arts. From the gondolier to the patrician, every body was repeating “Mi rivedrai, ti revedro.” [from Rossini’s Tancredi, 1813] In the very courts of law, the judges were obliged to impose silence on the auditory, who were ceaselessly humming “Ti revedro.” Of this we have been credibly informed by many persons who were witnesses of the singular fact. — Edmund Burke, Annual Register, vol. 66, 1824, 204. Also without last sentence: Entry “Rossini,” A Dictionary of Musicians, 1825 (1824), 385f.
… its close was followed by a degree of enthusiastic applause, which raised the idea of an Italian audience tutto furore, ln fact, it was one of the finest instrumental achievements we ever heard in our national Theatres. — Morning Post (London), 15 Oct. 1824. BNA
The Italian tutto furore ‘all furore’ flatters readers who understand the phrase and, like the earlier German citation, purports to tell the reader about Italian audiences, a memory wealthier readers who had travelled to Italy would savor.
Occasionally, however, there is something similar to the German and French as calques — or semicalques — of the Italian:
GENOA. Since the production of Eliza di Montalieri, we have had Gabriella di Vergy, an opera composed by Mercadante in Spain, but revised by himself here, which created a furore ... — William Ayrton, The Harmonicon 10, 1, (London),1832, 285.
The Harmonicon, a periodical that reported opera and concert news from all over Western Europe, was one vehicle through which furore would become a common expression.
Furore as Chaotic, Out of Control
Not everyone was enthusiastic about enthusiastic opera audiences or Continental singers. Tutto furore could be nothing but sound and fury, unwarranted adulation of mediocrity, and loud, riotous mob behavior:
It is good time for our foreign singing birds, German and Italian, to be on the wing homewards. ... the best of the new old pieces which are served up and received con furore in Italian towns, would hardly linger out a three nights' existence in London: witness, in proof, Maestro VACCAI's Romeo. [London debut, 10 April 1832] ... — The Atlas (London), 5 Aug. 1832. BNA
Or this comparison in a Welsh newspaper of the way the Spanish mezzo-soprano/contralto Maria Malibran was received in Britain
and Milan:
MALIBRAN IN MILAN. — The English, after all, are behind many other nations in the art of running mad. We get now and then into a pretty fit of delirium, but it is all over before we can enjoy the real flavour of a furore. …We, however, did something grand when [Maria] Malibran was amongst us. We did call her forward three times in one night, and we are laughed at all over the Continent for our moderation! Observe what they have done at Milan, according to the Gazette Musicale: “The opera was Bellini's Gorma [sic]; during the first act she was called for sixteen times, which exceeds anything of the kind ever heard of on Italian boards. When she re-appeared in the second act the applause was no longer confined to distinct rounds; it was a perfect tempest, … The stamping of feet, clapping of hands, and the roars of Bravo,' interspersed with yells of delight, lasted so long that the chief of the police, who was in the theatre, thought it necessary to restore tranquillity. Vain efforts! For more than a quarter of an hour there was no other performance but that of the audience itself. A superior authority was sent for, and the principal magistrate of the city, after having with difficulty obtained a hearing, declared that if the noisy demonstrations of satisfaction were not suspended, he would be himself bound to cause the evacuation of the theatre, because he could no longer answer for the safety of the building. This was the only means of curbing the enthusiasm of the spectators." — Monmouthshire Merlin (Monmoth), 10 Oct. 1835.
From this description of police having to intervene in what in the English version of the French report was essentially a mob out of control, it does not take a conceptual leap to arrive at the modern British usage, still retaining a vaguely Italian pronunciation /fju:ˈrɔ:rɪ/ for any controversy or dispute. Remember also that the British usage has always focused on the excitement and affect, not the success it indicates:
In 1950 a scientist by the name of Immanuel Velikovsky caused a considerable furore in the historical, religious and astronomical worlds by stating unequivocally that the flooding was caused by Venus which had been wrenched free from Jupiter and made an uncomfortably close encounter with earth. A very scholarly and erudite work, widely acclaimed at the time but since much maligned. — Alistair Maclean, Santorini, London, 1987. BNC
I can't begin to imagine the sort of furore that might break out if judges started to hand out the sort of penalties that they saw fit in particular cases. — Jonathan Cowap Morning Show: radio broadcast (Leisure). Rec. 7 Dec 1993. BNC
Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) are an important link in subject protection program, and their function defines ethical credentials of research. Of late there has been a furore in the country over the number of deaths in clinical research, and allegations of unethical research. — Ravindra B. Ghooi, “Institutional Review Boards: Challenges and Opportunities.” Perspectives in Clinical Research 5.2 (2014), 60–65.
America
The first use of furore in an American newspaper isn’t furore at all, but an italicized furor:
Niblo’s: The Revolving Statues, by the Ravels, the production of which has created quite a furor among artistes, amateurs, connaisseurs, and, in fact, throughout the whole class of visiters to the garden, will be repeated this evening, with other favorite entertainments, in which this popular family will appear. — Morning Herald (New York), 27 July 1839.
Our letters from Paris and London state that she resembles, but is superior to, the celebrated Mademoiselle Rachael, who has created so great a furor in France. — Morning Herald (New York), 27 Aug.1839.
Tomorrow night a new ballet is brought out, and another rush for tickets will be made. We never saw such a furor as now exists to go to the Park Theatre. — Morning Herald (New York), May 21, 1840.
Ordinarily, italic furor would signal the original Latin meaning of unbridled rage, though the meaning here is clearly that of the Italian. This raises the question of whether the Italian three syllables ever penetrated American English beyond a few elites. This would certainly help explain its absence from American dictionaries and its virtual disappearance from American sources.
The Italian spelling, does, however, appear in a bit of newspaper filler in 1842:
At Paris the fashion during hot weather has been that of swimming. … M. Swarmer, taking advantage of this furore, has established cold baths on the Quay d’Orsay, in which he has actually been teaching the fair sex to swim. — Macon Herald (Macon, Miss.), 26 Oct. 1842; Indiana State Sentinel (Indianapolis), 1 Nov.1842.
This is the Italian spelling, but the meaning has been transformed to denote a popular trend, as in this Australian newspaper:
As to the manteau cardinal, it is a perfect furore — the warehouse of Delille, in Paris, is the general rendezvous of the elegantes of Paris, and hardly can they suffice for the orders they receive. This costume is likely to hold for a length of time its vogue, for its expense renders it exclusive. — Launceton Advertiser (Tas.), 20 Oct. 1842, p. 4.
Later, however, the standard “Bellini” meaning appears:
Leon Pillet, the director of the opera, has arrived in Milan, on his voyage of discovery for a tenor and a prima donna. He came in time to witness a dreadful fiasco of Pacini's Opera “Maria” and Taglioni's grand ballet “II patto inernale.” The present Italian composers are so very monotonous and hurdy-gurdy, that Italy, the cradle of music and the opera, is obliged to ask the loan of Robert le Diable, Zampa, Masaniello, and Der Freischutz; the dilettanti dread a little the influence of this “musica ultra montana,” but the public generally are very well satisfied with the change; so Robert has made furore in Trieste, and the Huguenots are, under another title, very much liked in Florence. — The New York Herald, March 06, 1844.
The New York musical world is in a perfect furore on account of the wonderful performances of the great Pianist, just arrived, Mr. Meyer. — Richmond Enquirer 42, 49 (24 Oct. 1845).
The Globe says: Their performances are certainly the most wonderful and pleasing ever submitted to the public, and met with the most decided success. Their dances consist of groupings in figures of classical beauty now resembling baskets of luscious fruit now like clusters of flowers, … Their wonderful and novel performances created quite a furore. Indiana State Sentinel (Indianopolis) 6, No. 28,31 Dec. 1846.
The Danseuses Viennoises have produced quite a furore in our quiet city. — Richmond Enquirer 44, 4 (14 May 1847).
The first decades of the twentieth century saw the virtual disappearance of furore, though one still occasionally finds it, these two in the modern British sense of controversy, brouhaha:
The article quoted Israeli archeologist Ze'ev Herzog of Tel Aviv University as setting off a furore in Israel by stating that stories of the patriarchs are myths and that neither the Exodus nor Joshua's conquests ever occurred. — Jewish Post (Indianapolis), 25 April 2001.
The recent furore regarding HIV in the porn industry has once again brought to the fore the question of safety practices within adult entertainment. Corsair, Volume 100, Number 13, 1 December 2010.
Best Answer
All evidence seems to point at this particular usage of narrative originating in the mid 1980s American political media and popularizing in the 90s.:
Google Ngram on "competing narrative(s)"
Google Ngram on "media narrative(s)"
Google Books search of "competing narratives"
Here's a result from the Time magazine corpus from 1986:
It's important to note that one of the meanings of "narrate" is to "supply a running commentary"
American Heritage dictionary
The noun form of this is narration, or the background commentary that can be found in newsreels, documentaries, or movies. The reason narration is used to describe this sort of commentary is because narration has a connotation of the present moment (as the -tion suffix denotes a process), while narrative is the narration as the product of a whole.
In other words, a news story can be a narrative, but it gives narration. Therefore, the usage for "narrative" outlined in the question (competing narratives) comes from the definition of "narrate" that's shown above. In other words, when two narratives are competing in the media then that means that two different forms of running commentary that are fashionable in the media are competing, and in some cases they may even be contradictory to each other. .