Complex Numbers

What's a Wonk?

Look, sometimes I just like to trace a word's etymology.

The preoccupation of ‘wonks’  

But I often get more than I bargained for. After all, no word exists by itself.

If you’re looking for evidence on how language can change, look no further than William Safire’s 1980 “On Language” column in the New York Times discussing collegiate slang—or, as Safire puts it, “campusese.”

I have a vague memory of that, but I couldn't recall the contents if you paid me.

According to that column, easy courses were called “guts,” and people who would do anything for an A were called “throats,” short for “cutthroats.” “Throats” was a replacement for “grinds,” itself a replacement for “bookworm.”

I have an alternative idea for why people who would do anything for an A were called "throats," but let's leave that alone for now. And when I went to college just a few years later, the word "gut" was absolutely still in use for easy courses. The course I took in film, for example, was officially titled "Cinema as an Art Form," which we changed to "Cinema as a Gut Form," often shortened to "Cinema-gut."

“At Yale, the grind is a ‘weenie,’ ” and “at Harvard, the excessively studious student is derided as a ‘wonk,’ which Amy Berman, Harvard ’79, fancifully suggests may be ‘know’ spelled backward. (In British slang, ‘wonky’ means ‘unsteady.’)”

As I had no contact with Ivy League people -- well, except my cousin who had gone to MIT, but we didn't speak much -- this is all news to me.

Merriam-Webster defines “wonk” as “a person preoccupied with arcane details or procedures in a specialized field” or, broadly, a “nerd.”

Meanwhile, the distinction between "nerd" and "geek" is still hazy to me. If pressed, I'd say a nerd is someone who likes to learn stuff, while a geek has more of a math/science focus. Everyone is a nerd about something, but not everyone can claim geekitude.

Webster’s New World College Dictionary, the one favored by the Associated Press, calls “wonk” slang. And though its synonyms are slightly insulting terms like “nerd,” “geek,” and “dweeb,” “wonk” is worn as a badge of honor by many people who are specialists in their field (or claim to be).

Yeah, look, "nerd" and "geek" haven't been insulting for many years now. We reclaimed them long ago. As for "dweeb," well, that's just a nerd in a bowtie.

Turns out, the word “wonk” has had many (unconnected) meanings over the years.

This is why I'm a nerd about etymology.

We are still not any closer to the etymology of “wonk.” The OED has a clue, in its entry for “wonky,” which it traces to 1919: “Of a person: shaky, groggy; unstable,” the British definition Safire cited. “Of a thing: faulty, unsound; unreliable.” The OED says its etymology is “Obscure: the German element wankel- has similar force.”

I am forced to assume that "wonk" and "wonky" have entirely different etymologies, like "candle" and "candy." Just because words sound or are spelled similarly doesn't mean they come from the same place.

The article doesn't, however, make a connection with Willy Wonka, which is a terrible oversight; seems to me that fictional character's name would have connections to both "wonk" and "wonky." You know, because he was an expert on candymaking, and more than a little eccentric.

In the end, words mean what we collectively decide they mean, and only the most passionate grammar wonk won't admit that language itself is wonky as hell.