Oral tradition there holds that the word is derived from knurd (drunk spelled backwards), which was used to describe people who studied rather than partied. The term gnurd (spelled with the "g") was in use at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) by the year 1965.

Who came up with nerd?

Seuss invented the word 'nerd,' and 42 other author-invented words.

Who invented the word geek?

The word itself, “geek”, came from the word “geck”, which was originally a Low German word which meant someone who is a “fool/freak/simpleton”. The first documented case of “nerd” was in Dr. Seuss's If I Ran the Zoo, in 1950. The specific text was: “a Nerkle, a Nerd, and a Seersucker too”.