1
as in geek
a person slavishly devoted to intellectual or academic pursuits
was such a nerd in college that she spent Saturday nights at the library
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Antonyms & Near Antonyms
2
as in intellectual
a person with strong intellectual interests
an unlikely romance between a nerd and a campus beauty queen
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Example Sentences
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Recent Examples of nerd
An array of charts buried in the fine print of the state budget, unknown to all but a few fiscal nerds, details what California has collected in revenues and spent over the last half-century.
—
Dan Walters, Mercury News, 17 Feb. 2026
For the heartfelt poster nerd, this is where collecting grows most focussed, in the pursuit of works by an individual artist.
—Anthony Lane, New Yorker, 16 Feb. 2026
An array of charts buried in the fine print of the state budget, unknown to all but a few fiscal nerds, details what California has collected in revenues and spent over the last half-century.
—Dan Walters, Oc Register, 16 Feb. 2026
Perhaps the most famous home in Los Angeles, The Stahl House, designed by modernist master Pierre Koenig, has inspired countless architecture nerds.
—Hadley Meares, HollywoodReporter, 14 Feb. 2026
See All Example Sentences for nerd
Dan Walters, Mercury News, 17 Feb. 2026
For the heartfelt poster nerd, this is where collecting grows most focussed, in the pursuit of works by an individual artist.
—Anthony Lane, New Yorker, 16 Feb. 2026
An array of charts buried in the fine print of the state budget, unknown to all but a few fiscal nerds, details what California has collected in revenues and spent over the last half-century.
—Dan Walters, Oc Register, 16 Feb. 2026
Perhaps the most famous home in Los Angeles, The Stahl House, designed by modernist master Pierre Koenig, has inspired countless architecture nerds.
—Hadley Meares, HollywoodReporter, 14 Feb. 2026
See All Example Sentences for nerd
Recent Examples of Synonyms for nerd
Noun
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Their designers are a bunch of obsessive geeks, in the best way possible, who take pride in producing designs no one else can touch.—
Jakob Schiller,
Outside,
16 Feb. 2026
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Jim described himself as a lifelong car geek, but his schoolteacher mother was a single parent.—
Jeff Gluck,
New York Times,
11 Feb. 2026
Noun
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In the years following Deng Xiaoping’s turn toward a capitalist economy, some Chinese intellectuals felt a kind of spiritual malaise; Deng’s reforms had failed to provide moral direction for a vast and proud former empire.—
Chang Che,
New Yorker,
8 Mar. 2026
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More to Explore In this environment, some activists and intellectuals adopted bikes as part of a resistance to car-centric capitalist modernism.—
Livia Gershon,
JSTOR Daily,
5 Mar. 2026
Cite this Entry
“Nerd.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/nerd. Accessed 9 Mar. 2026.
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