9 March 2022
Poindexter has been an American slang term for an egghead or nerd since at least the early 1980s. Poindexter is a common surname, but the slang term comes from a character, a child genius, named Poindexter in the animated television series Felix the Cat, which started airing in 1959. Felix the Cat was created as a comic strip in 1919 by Pat Sullivan and Otto Messmer, but Poindexter was introduced in the 1950s the television series. Poindexter and Felix appeared together in various incarnations of the cartoon in the succeeding decades, becoming staples of youth culture. The slang use of poindexter is first recorded in 1981, but it is almost certainly older in oral use.
The slang use of poindexter may also be influenced by an older slang term for a nerd or intellectual, pointy-head. The term was a favorite of US politician George Wallace, as can be seen by this Newark Star-Ledger editorial from 8 October 1968:
Mr. Wallace is preaching a customized brand of Populism, a class struggle that mocks the intellectual, the pointy-head professors, and promises greater social reforms for the working class, increased Social Security benefits, doubling the income exemption, and more federal aid for highways and cities.
This sense of pointy-head is a Janus use of the term, as there is a much older sense of pointy-headed to mean stupid. This older sense is a derogatory reference to the condition of microcephaly. The use of pointy-head in reference to intellectuals implies that for all their knowledge and intelligence, such people lack common sense.
The slang term poindexter is first recorded on 5 March 1981 by linguist Connie Eble, who engaged in a long-term project of recording university campus slang:
Poindexter, person, usually a male, who studies all the time.
The term appears in print a few months later in a profile of Texas billionaire Lamar Hunt. Hunt, along with his brothers, Nelson Bunker Hunt and William Herbert Hunt, attempted to corner the silver market in the late 1970s, at one point owning a third of the world’s supply. When the price of silver collapsed in 1980, the brothers lost over a billion dollars. In 1988, the brothers declared bankruptcy when forced to pay restitution for their attempt. This newspaper profile was apparently an attempt to whitewash Hunt’s image in the wake of the scandal and distance Lamar, who had played a less public role in the silver scandal, from his two brothers. The relevant paragraph reads:
And he is a Lamar, not a Mr. Hunt. If he’s a mister at all, it’s a Smith. You may think him smaller than his 5-11 and 175-odd pounds. That’s because he has a small presence: small smile, small voice, small emotions. From a distance, he has the look of a Poindexter, but that’s not him either. He isn’t a reclusive Clint Murchison or a repulsive J.R. He doesn’t seem to share his brother’s grindstone desire to make more than their great grandchildren ever will spend.
Hunt, who was active as an owner and promoter of professional sports, was also the coiner of the term Super Bowl for the National Football League (American football) championship game.
In its early days, poindexter was associated with “Valley Girl” slang, which was all the rage c.1982. An article in the 25 November 1982 Indianapolis News uses the term in an article on slang that follows the journalistic trope of packing as many slang words into a paragraph as it can. While the individual terms are all actual slang, no California Valley Girl ever actually talked like this:
Like, mom, your cooking was awesome to the max. Like, mondo. The kids and I had a scarf-out. Mac-out to the max. Tubular! I’m tweeked. So, let’s not sit around here like a Poindexter. I mean that would be Melvin. Let’s case it around.
A more restrained use of the term appears in a Newark Star-Ledger article from 13 December 1982 about California teen fashions to be found in a New Jersey mall:
I knew that because in my days as a poindexter (an individual who reads a lot of books) I happened across “The Valley Girls’ Guide to Life,” and the book starts out by noting, “Shopping is the funnest thing to do.”
By this point, poindexter was probably leaving teen slang and entering the general vocabulary. (The fastest way to get teens to stop using a term is for adults to start.)
Sources:
Bayless, Skip. “Lamar Hunt: Commoners’ Billionaire.” Dallas Morning News, 4 June 1981, 1B. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.
Finston, Mark. “Valley Styles Cruise a Jersey Mall, Fer Sure.” Newark Star-Ledger (New Jersey), 13 December 1982, 27. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.
Green’s Dictionary of Slang, 2022, s.v. poindexter, n., pointy-head, n.
Hess, Skip. “Like Man, It’s Mondo.” The Indianapolis News, 25 November 1982, 43. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.
Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, September 2006, poindexter, n., pointy-head, n. and adj.
“The Wallace Pitch.” Newark Star-Ledger (New Jersey), 8 October 1968, 16. Readex: America’s Historic Newspapers.
Image credit: Joseph Oriolo, 1959, DreamWorks Classics. Fair use of a copyrighted image to illustrate the topic under discussion.