In the slang

Slang

Slang is the use of informal words and expressions that are not considered standard in the speaker's language or dialect but are considered more acceptable when used socially. Slang is often to be found in areas of the lexicon that refer to things considered taboo...

 of the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

, egghead is an anti-intellectual

Anti-intellectualism

Anti-intellectualism is hostility towards and mistrust of intellect, intellectuals, and intellectual pursuits, usually expressed as the derision of education, philosophy, literature, art, and science, as impractical and contemptible...

 epithet

Epithet

An epithet or byname is a descriptive term accompanying or occurring in place of a name and having entered common usage. It has various shades of meaning when applied to seemingly real or fictitious people, divinities, objects, and binomial nomenclature. It is also a descriptive title...

, 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 boffin

Boffin

In the slang of the United Kingdom, boffins are scientists, medical doctors, engineers, and other people engaged in technical or scientific research.-Origin:...

. The term egghead reached its peak currency during the 1950s, when vice-presidential candidate Richard Nixon

Richard Nixon

Richard Milhous Nixon was the 37th President of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. The only president to resign the office, Nixon had previously served as a US representative and senator from California and as the 36th Vice President of the United States from 1953 to 1961 under...

 used it against Democratic Presidential nominee Adlai Stevenson. It was used by Clinton advisor Paul Begala

Paul Begala

Paul Edward Begala is an American political consultant and political commentator. He was an adviser to President Bill Clinton. Begala was a chief strategist for the 1992 Clinton-Gore campaign, which carried 33 states and made Clinton the first Democrat to win the White House in sixteen years...

 in the 2008 presidential campaign to describe Senator Barack Obama

Barack Obama

Barack Hussein Obama II is the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office. Obama previously served as a United States Senator from Illinois, from January 2005 until he resigned following his victory in the 2008 presidential election.Born in...

's supporters when he said, "Obama can't win with just the eggheads and African-Americans." The term has largely been replaced by other anti-intellectual epithets such as elitist (political), and geek

Geek

The word geek is a slang term, with different meanings ranging from "a computer expert or enthusiast" to "a carnival performer who performs sensationally morbid or disgusting acts", with a general pejorative meaning of "a peculiar or otherwise dislikable person, esp[ecially] one who is perceived to...

or nerd

Nerd

Nerd is a derogatory slang term for an intelligent but socially awkward and obsessive person who spends time on unpopular or obscure pursuits, to the exclusion of more mainstream activities. Nerds are considered to be awkward, shy, and unattractive...

(social).

Origins

In his Pulitzer Prize

Pulitzer Prize

The Pulitzer Prize is a U.S. award for achievements in newspaper and online journalism, literature and musical composition. It was established by American publisher Joseph Pulitzer and is administered by Columbia University in New York City...

-winning historical essay on American anti-intellectualism, historian Richard Hofstadter

Richard Hofstadter

Richard Hofstadter was an American public intellectual of the 1950s, a 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 highbrow

Highbrow

Used 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 Bromfield

Louis Bromfield

Louis 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 someday 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 Flexner

Stuart Berg Flexner

Stuart 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).

In popular culture

• Egghead, brainy Batman villain.
• Egghead
  Egghead (comics)
  Egghead is the name of two fictional Marvel Comics villains. The original first appeared in Tales to Astonish #38. He is also the arch-nemesis of super-hero Henry Pym. The second first appeared in Dark Reign: Young Avengers #1.-Elihas Starr:...
  
  , genius Marvel comics character.