Oddities and Curiosities of Words and Literature by C C Bombaugh, one of my favourite reads, feels like it might be an obscure book.
Oddities and Curiosities of Words and Literature by C C Bombaugh, one of my favourite reads, feels like it might be an obscure book.
Swot is a venerable and frequently used word, derived from the word sweat. Neek is what’s current with my children’s generation (South London): it’s a portmanteau of nerd and geek, apparently. Spod may well be regionally and temporally specific, as it’s what I used to be called in SW England in the 1980s.
These kinds of insults definitely exist here in the UK too, e.g., swot, spod, as well as geek, neek, nerd, etc. I don’t think these are imported from the US, as they’ve been around for a long time. Perhaps a manifestation of anglo-saxon anti-intellectualism?
But wouldn’t ‘leery’ make sense there? It means something close to ‘suspicious’ after all.
I don’t think I’ve come across that before, but I’d say it depends on what is meant:
There may well be some other ones, but I don’t know what they might be.