“Egghead” is a pejorative slang term used to describe someone who prioritizes academic pursuits over social interactions. It gained popularity during the 1952 US presidential campaign when Richard Nixon used it to describe Adlai Stevenson’s intellectual demeanor. The term has since been replaced by other insults, but is still used to describe academics who are disconnected from the world outside of academia.
Possessing a superior intellect or academic bearing does not always help a person ingratiate himself very well with others. A common anti-intellectual epithet often used against a know-it-all bully or intellectual snob is egghead, a pejorative slang word most likely popularized in the 1950s. An egghead would best be described as one who embraces academic study or intellectual pursuits to the near exclusion of all other social interactions. A true egghead often comes across as aggressively intelligent, seeming to chide others for not sharing his academic prowess.
Many sources suggest that the term egghead entered popular usage during the controversial 1952 United States presidential campaign season. The Democratic nominee was a bald intellectual named Adlai Stevenson, while the Republican nominee was the popular commander of the World War II Dwight Eisenhower. While Eisenhower was certainly a competent politician and military strategist, Stevenson was widely considered the more educated, if more socially remote, candidate. Vice presidential candidate Richard Nixon used Stevenson’s intellectual demeanor to his advantage during campaign speeches.
Because Stevenson had a prominent forehead and male pattern baldness, a look commonly seen among male academics, Nixon referred to Stevenson’s esoteric campaign platform as the work of a disconnected “egghead,” not someone attuned to the needs of ordinary citizens. While the term “egghead” may have been used to describe baldness or lack of intelligence in the past, it became a popular anti-intellectual epithet after Nixon’s campaign speeches. Adlai Stevenson lost the 1952 presidential election to Dwight Eisenhower, and some political pundits suggest that a major factor was indeed the perception of Stevenson as an “egghead,” not a charismatic “man of the people” like Eisenhower.
The term egghead lives on to this day, though it doesn’t quite carry the sting it once did. Other terms such as geek, brainiac, know-it-all, and nerd have largely replaced the pejorative egghead, although it is still applied to some academics who rarely interact with the world outside a university or research center .
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