In the
slangSlang is the use of highly informal words and expressions that are not considered standard in the speaker's dialect or language. It is often used as a way to say words that are not appropriate, and is not often found in the standard dictionary for the language...
of the
United StatesThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
,
egghead was an
anti-intellectualAnti-intellectualism describes a sentiment of hostility towards, or mistrust of, intellectuals and intellectual pursuits. This may be expressed in various ways, such as attacks on the merits of science, education, art, or literature....
epithetAn epithet is a descriptive word or phrase accompanying or occurring in place of the name of a person or thing, which has become a fixed formula...
, directed at people considered too out-of-touch with ordinary people and too lacking in realism, common sense, virility, etc. on account of their intellectual interests. The British equivalent is "
BoffinIn the slang of the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, boffins are scientists, engineers, and other people engaged in technical or scientific research. The word 'boffin' can also be used to refer to any particularly clever person...
". The term
egghead reached its peak currency during the 1950s, when vice-presidential candidate
Richard NixonRichard Milhous Nixon was the 37th President of the United States and is the only president to resign the office. He was also the 36th Vice President of the United States ....
used it against Democratic Presidential nominee
Adlai StevensonAdlai Ewing Stevenson II was an American politician, noted for his intellectual demeanor, eloquent oratory, and promotion of liberal causes in the Democratic Party. He served one term as governor of Illinois, and received the Democratic Party's nomination for president in 1952 and 1956; both times...
.
In the
slangSlang is the use of highly informal words and expressions that are not considered standard in the speaker's dialect or language. It is often used as a way to say words that are not appropriate, and is not often found in the standard dictionary for the language...
of the
United StatesThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
,
egghead was an
anti-intellectualAnti-intellectualism describes a sentiment of hostility towards, or mistrust of, intellectuals and intellectual pursuits. This may be expressed in various ways, such as attacks on the merits of science, education, art, or literature....
epithetAn epithet is a descriptive word or phrase accompanying or occurring in place of the name of a person or thing, which has become a fixed formula...
, directed at people considered too out-of-touch with ordinary people and too lacking in realism, common sense, virility, etc. on account of their intellectual interests. The British equivalent is "
BoffinIn the slang of the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, boffins are scientists, engineers, and other people engaged in technical or scientific research. The word 'boffin' can also be used to refer to any particularly clever person...
". The term
egghead reached its peak currency during the 1950s, when vice-presidential candidate
Richard NixonRichard Milhous Nixon was the 37th President of the United States and is the only president to resign the office. He was also the 36th Vice President of the United States ....
used it against Democratic Presidential nominee
Adlai StevensonAdlai Ewing Stevenson II was an American politician, noted for his intellectual demeanor, eloquent oratory, and promotion of liberal causes in the Democratic Party. He served one term as governor of Illinois, and received the Democratic Party's nomination for president in 1952 and 1956; both times...
. It was used by Clinton advisor
Paul BegalaPaul Begala is a Democratic political consultant, a political commentator, a former advisor to President Bill Clinton. He gained national prominence as half of the political consulting team Carville and Begala. Until June 2005, Begala was a co-host of CNN's political debate program, Crossfire...
in the 2008 presidential campaign to describe Senator
Barack ObamaBarack Hussein Obama II is the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office, as well as the first president born in Hawaii...
's supporters when he said, "Obama can't win with just the eggheads and African-Americans." The term is rarely used, having been replaced in U.S. politics by other anti-intellectual epithets and socially by terms such as
elitist,
nerdNerd is a term often bearing a derogatory connotation or stereotype, that refers to a person who passionately pursues intellectual activities, esoteric knowledge, or other obscure interests that are age inappropriate rather than engaging in more social or popular activities...
and
geekThe word geek is a slang term, noting individuals as "a peculiar or otherwise odd person, especially one who is perceived to be overly obsessed with one or more things including those of intellectuality, electronics, etc." Formerly, the term referred to a carnival performer often billed as a wild...
.
Origins
In his
Pulitzer PrizeThe Pulitzer Prize is a U.S. award for achievements in newspaper journalism, literature and musical composition. It was established by Hungarian-American publisher Joseph Pulitzer and is administered by Columbia University in New York City....
-winning historical essay on American anti-intellectualism, historian
Richard HofstadterRichard Hofstadter was an American historian and DeWitt Clinton Professor of American History at Columbia University...
wrote: "During the campaign of 1952, the country seemed to be in need of some term to express that disdain for intellectuals which had by then become a self-conscious motif in American politics. The word
egghead was originally used without invidious associations, but quickly assumed them, and acquired a much sharper tone than the traditional
highbrowUsed colloquially as a noun or adjective, highbrow is synonymous with intellectual; as an adjective, it also means elite, and generally carries a connotation of high culture. The word draws its metonymy from the pseudoscience of phrenology, and was originally simply a physical descriptor...
. Shortly after the campaign was over,
Louis BromfieldLouis Bromfield was an American author and conservationist who gained international recognition winning the Pulitzer Prize and pioneering innovative scientific farming concepts.-Biography:...
, a popular novelist of right-wing political persuasion, suggested that the word might some day [sic] find its way into dictionaries as follows:
- "Egghead: A person of spurious intellectual pretensions, often a professor or the protégé of a professor. Essentially confused in thought and immersed in mixture of sentimentality and violent evangelism. A doctrinaire supporter of Middle-European socialism as opposed to Greco-French-American ideas of democracy and liberalism. Subject to the old-fashioned philosophical morality of Nietzsche which frequently leads him into jail or disgrace. A self-conscious prig, so given to examining all sides of a question that he becomes thoroughly addled while remaining always in the same spot. An anemic bleeding heart.
"'The recent election,' Bromfield remarked, 'demonstrated a number of things, not the least of them being the extreme remoteness of the 'egghead' from the thought and feeling of the whole of the people'" (
Anti-Intellectualism in American Life [New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1963], pp. 9-10).
In their
Dictionary of American Slang (1960; 2nd supplemented ed. 1975), Harold Wentworth and
Stuart Berg FlexnerStuart Berg Flexner was a lexicographer, editor and author, noted for his books on the origins of American words and expressions, including I Hear America Talking and Listening to America; as co-editor of the Dictionary of American Slang; and as chief editor of the Random House Dictionary, Second...
cite two earlier meanings of
egghead, one referring to baldness, the other to stupidity. Wentworth and Flexner note that the meaning under discussion here was "[p]op. during presidential campaign of 1952 when the supporters of Adlai Stevenson, Democratic candidate, were called eggheads. Thus orig. the term carried the connotation of 'politically minded' and 'liberal'; today its application is more general. May have originated in ref. to the high forehead of Mr. Stevenson or of the pop. image of an academician" (p. 171).
The term "egghead" can also be used to describe someone who is highly intelligent, and analyzes things with a scientific mind.