IP: ** Geek!

[David Farber <farber () central cis upenn edu>]

From: Keith Meidling <meidling () ix netcom com> (by way of
meadersm () ix netcom com (Mark Meaders, DINFOS/IRM))


Found this on the net...


Get this, I was joking around with someone in the office (from
Ireland). He had worked 29 straight hours earlier in the week,
so I called him a geek for volunteering to work so much.  He
said, "So, I bite the head off of live chickens, do I?"  I asked
him what he was talking about, and  he told me the definition of
geek.




I didn't believe him, so he got a dictionary from the
translationist's office (one of the six-inch thick dictionaries)
and showed me the defintion.  My first thought was disbelief that
he was right.  My second thought was how the hell would he know
something like that.  The definition of geek is:




GEEK <noun>; a carnival performer often billed as a wild man
whose act usually includes biting the head off a live chicken or
snake.


The term came into being in the middle ages.  And here I always
thought it was just current slang and merely a synonym for nerd
or dweeb.




         Thanks to: Paul Zoski for this contribution