Word.ws English Dictionary

nerdom

Syllables: nerd·dom

nerdom noun: the attitudes and behaviours of a nerd; nerdiness.

Noun

nerdom (uncountable)

  1. (colloquial, rare) The attitudes and behaviours of a nerd; nerdiness.
    • When she [Valerie Mahaffey] was 17 she fell in love with a schoolmate named Ben: 'Together, we pulled each other out of nerddom,' she said.1983 April 1, Nan Robertson, “Tigers or ‘top girls,’ Valerie Mahaffey adjusts”, in The New York Times, archived from the original on 20 Dec 2016
    • The self-described "exemplar of nerdom" feels right at home with Carl Sagan's speculative science-fiction [title]1997 August, Douglas Eby, “James Woods: The self-described "exemplar of nerdom" feels right at home with Carl Sagan's speculative science-fiction”, in Cinefantastique, volume 29, number 2, Forest...
  2. (colloquial, rare) Nerds considered as a group.
    • I still chuckle at some of [the] jokes that we targeted to very narrow slices of nerdom.2009, Mark Dalrymple, “Foreword”, in Jack Nutting; Dave Mark; Jeff LaMarche, Learn Cocoa on the Mac (Books for Professionals by Professionals), [New York, N.Y.]: Apress, page xi

Forms of nerdom

alternative formnerddom

Origin of nerdom

From nerd + -dom; attested in the USA from 1983. Note that -dom is used both in the sense of “domain” (nerds, as a group) and in the sense of “characteristics” (being a nerd, nerdiness).

Questions about nerdom

What does nerdom mean?
Nerdom means the attitudes and behaviours of a nerd; nerdiness.
What part of speech is nerdom?
Nerdom is a noun.

Words near nerdom in the dictionary

  1. nerdlingers
  2. nerdlings
  3. nerdly
  4. nerdness
  5. nerdo
  6. nerdom
  7. nerdos
  8. nerds
  9. nerds out
  10. nerdship
  11. nerdsnipe

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: nerdom (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “nerdom.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/nerdom. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.