With my friend we made up a somewhat general equivalent of nerd on a bike: nerd on wheels!

But if you want to be specific you can use nerd in a car, or even nerd on a bus.

All these insults bring me back to last year in English class when we were studying Shakespeare and we were allowed to insult each other in Shakespearean English. I'll see if I can still find the list of insults.

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SHAKESPEAREAN INSULTS

Directions: Combineth one word or phrase from each of the columns below and addeth "Thou" to the beginning. Make certain thou knowest the meaning of thy strong words, and thou shalt have the perfect insult to fling at the wretched fools of the opposing team. Let thyself go. Mix and match to find that perfect barb from the bard!

COLUMN A
bawdy
brazen
churlish
distempered
fitful
gnarling
greasy
grissled
haughty
hideous

COLUMN B
bunch-backed
clay-brained
dog-hearted
empty-hearted
evil-eyed
fat-kidneyed
heavy-headed
horn-mad
ill-breeding

COLUMN C
canker-blossom
clotpole
crutch
cutpurse
dogfish
egg-shell
gull-catcher
hedge-pig
hempseed
jack-a-nape

We were given 30 words in each column but that's too much to list here.

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Hmmmm ... I don't know about clever insults but ... when I am driving I enjoy dividing other drivers in to categories of 'twits' (who are simply naive idiots, unaware of their poor / dangerous / unsettling driving styles) and 'twerps', who are quite aware of what they are doing and ought to be banned from the road.

I find that involving myself in this simple categorisation makes my tolerance of other drivers a lot higher than it might otherwise be, and prevents me from using much stronger language.

Those clever insults we find in the classics (read: Shakespeare) are usually multi-layered in meaning. Therefore, I submit to you that each insult have two components, each a barb, but the two combined a truly two-edged sword:

nerd in a pocket (a nerd under someone's control)
nerd in a pocket-protector (a nerd under another nerd's control)
Nereus, Nerd of the high seas (akin to a Greek sea-god)
Neronic, Emperor of Nerdness (Hail, Nero!)
Neurotic nerd of the Netherlands (no offense intended, of course)

Oh, I give up.

nerd in a pocket (a nerd under someone's control)
nerd in a pocket-protector (a nerd under another nerd's control)
Nereus, Nerd of the high seas (akin to a Greek sea-god)
Neronic, Emperor of Nerdness (Hail, Nero!)
Neurotic nerd of the Netherlands (no offense intended, of course)

HAHA! That's one of the funniest things I've heard in a long time. I had to tell my friend, with whom I originaly started the nerd names, and she laughed too. I especially like "nerd in a pocket-protector" and "neurotic nerd of the Netherlands".

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>pocket-protector

What on earth is a pocket protector?

In reply to:

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What on earth is a pocket protector?

---

a plastic pocket which fits inside your shirt pocket for the purpose of holding all your various colored ink-pens and pencils whilst protecting the fabric of said shirt -- standard issue to engineers and computer nerds during the 70s and on.

here's a particularly typical one:
http://www.powerup.com.au/~squadron/order.htm

the part with the logo is a flap which, when 'flapped' over your pocket and with pens clipped to it, holds the whole dingus in place.

Abecedarian insult: "Sir, you are an apogenous, bovaristic, coprolalial, dasypygal, excerebrose, facinorous, gnathonic, hircine, ithyphallic, jumentous, kyphotic, labrose, mephitic, napiform, oligophrenial, papuliferous, quisquilian, rebarbative, saponaceous, thersitical, unguinous, ventripotent, wlatsome, xyloocephalous, yirning, zoophyte!"

[try spell-checking that]

Abecedarian insult: "Sir, you are an apogenous, bovaristic, coprolalial, dasypygal..."

Zounds, your xiphoid words verify ultimate truth, sir. Rather quaint parody of numinous meta - language. Kindred joksters inevitably have gathered flavorful epithets. Don't coddle boisterous abecedarians!

I am humbled before your fantastic left-handed dyslexic comeback, Brandon.

Brandon--

Not to be topped, Sir! Hands-down winnah!

Brandon, that was brilliant. (for very small values of brilliance ;)

Brandon, that was brilliant. (for very small values of brilliance ;)

Appropriate for the category, Tsuwm.

Pocket Protector

Thank you for enlightening me. I'll file it under Duct Tape.

Ta

In American Sign Langauge, there is a popular and wide-spread form of visual poetry called the ABC Story. To write (sign) the poem, the signer uses the handshape of each successive letter in the alphabet to produce signs and classifers. In sign language, the shape of the hand has nothing to do with the orthographic/graphemic form of a word or concept. For example, one can sign GET-DRUNK, DECREASE-IN-HEALTH, KNOCK, and SET-UP using the A handshape.

Though the term "ABC Story" is descriptive, what else might this kind of poetry be known as? Is there an English term used to describe this format?

>In American Sign Langauge, there is a popular and wide-spread form of visual poetry called the ABC Story<

Brandon, I think I get what you mean. The words of line 1are made with the A handshape, the words of line 2 with the B handshape and so on? So the English equivalent woudl be the words of line 1 beginning with A, those of line 2 beginning with B etc?

Or just the first word / sign of each line?

I don't know a word for this kind of poetry. It also reminds me of rebus or acrostic poems, where the first letters of the lines, read downwards, spell out a word or phrase. No idea what that's called either, nor can I find an example. I seem to recall there's one somewhere in Vikram Seth's 'A Suitable Boy', but this is another book that has checked out of my bookshelves without formal permission....

The words of line 1are made with the A handshape...

In ABC stories, there are only 26 signs used to convey the story (wholly adequate for an indepth and developed story because one sign may equal an entire sentence-worth of English words). I think I have seen the acronym-based poetry somewhere also, but that book is missing from the library in my head.

<rebus or acrostic poems, where the first letters of the lines, read downwards, spell out a word or
phrase.>

Bridget, there was a famous example of this in The Bulletin (for non-Aussies, an Australian weekly) in the 1960s (I think). Since I read your post yesterday, I've been searching the house trying to locate the issue. Any other Aussies around then who remember this and, more importantly, can find a copy?

I thought a rebus was a puzzle where pictures represent words, for example where a picture of a flying insect and the number four would represent the word before. They used to be very common in my comics and annuals when I was a lad, but I don't know if they are still used.

Bingley

BIngley, I confess I used the word rebus without looking it up and checking! I've seen it used in the way you describe, but I had an unsubstantiated impression that it was also used for puzzles more generally. Whther this stretches to cover the kind of poem I am describing is even more debatable.
I withdraw the word rebus!

rebus
1) to transfer in a bus again
2) to carry or clear dishes (in a restaurant) again

To Mabel and Emily Kerr

A Double Acrostic

Thanks, Thanks Fair Cousins for your gift
So swiftly borne to Albion's Isle
Though angry waves their crests uplift
Between our shores for many a league!

("So far, so good," you say: "but how
Your Cousins? Let me tell you madam.
We're both descended, you'll allow,
From one great-great-great-grandsire, Noah.)

Your picture shall adorn the book
That's bound so neatly and moroccoly
With that bright great which every cook
Delights to see in beds of cauliflower.

The carte is very good but pray
Send me the larger one as well
"A cool request!" I hear you say.
"Give him an inch, he takes an acre!

"But we'll be generous because
We well remember in the story,
How good and gentle Alice was,
The day she argued with the parrot!"

Lewis Carroll

Emily and Mabel Kerr were two young girls living in Canada who sent their photograph to Dodgson.. He replied with this double acrostic based on the girl's first name. The last word in each stanza is a red herring; for each one substitute the correct rhyme, arrange five words vertically and then read downwards : Their first and last letters spell out Mabel and Emily.

M il E
A da M
B roccil I
E l L
L or Y