Simon Pegg, an English actor and comedian, wrote a book in 2011 that he titled Nerd Do Well: A Small Boy’s Journey to Becoming a Big Kid. When asked about the title of the book in an interview, the actor stated that it was a play on the phrase ne’er-do-well, which is defined as “a good-for-nothing; a worthless, disreputable person” by the Oxford English Dictionary. According to an 2011 article on Boston.com Pegg stated in the original interview that the word nerd actually originates from the phrase ne’er-do-well “that’s where the word derived from – it was just shortening of that, which then became ne’erd and then nerd, meaning someone on the fringe of society”. Although he titled his book after this belief, there is once again no proof that
