Egghead

Egghead is a colloquial term, sometimes rather disparagingly, sometimes ( self-) ironic, is taken as the name for a scientist. The concept aims to loud prejudice among academics particularly frequent (half) from Bald.

The term is applicable without pejorative meaning an elongated oval head shape. In Europe, however, the physiognomy has a long tradition, is closed in the face of external characteristics insbesonderes to certain behavioral traits. In the 20th century, this resulted in an extensive pseudo-scientific theory of phrenology, in which a simple measurement of a skull a variety of characteristics of the person has been closed.

Elements of the connection of head shape and high intellectual achievements was early high forehead, which led from the Middle Ages to a fashion, plucking the hair front end. The positioning of the forward-looking thinking in the frontal lobes of the brain support this thesis in the early 20th century, more brain research involved a pronounced central bar on a broad combination ability. The distributions are indeed externally can not be read, the acceptance in academic circles of the 20th century leads, however, to the fact that academics rather showed with a bald head, instead of pursuing the symbol of the full hair as external- health feature ( painted about with wigs or head hair ).

An origin thesis, go together in the egghead and academics, now refers to this acceptance of bald heads and the fact that academics are more often seen in the pictures with a bald head than other professions. Thus, the term may have originated as a nickname for a teacher among the students, in which a person is identified by means of a conspicuous external feature, and to have originated in the frequency of a class name, which is a precursor of the policy term.

Political term

The origin of the derogatory use of the term is not fully understood. However, it is known that the same major English term " egg head " apparently for the first time appeared in the 1950s in American elections. Richard Nixon used it in a negative way for his opponents - he called it so as aloof intellectuals who have lost the practical relevance to the realities and its requirements. Undoing this designation was particularly the two-time presidential candidate of the Democratic Party Adlai Stevenson, whose defeats against Dwight D. Eisenhower was not least due to its little folk-like style.

Another theory of the science fiction writer Philip K. Dick puts the origin of the word in the Nazi era: Egghead was allegedly used by the Nazis for intellectuals, because their skulls are easily broken when it hit. This origin of the word is, however, unoccupied and probably fiction. Perhaps a re-transfer from the fact that Nazis initially tried also on the basis of head shape to classify people racially.

Further use

• In the railway transport, the term egghead is slang for certain electric and diesel railcars. The Electric Railcar ET 30 and ET ​​56 (series 430 and 456 ) and the diesel railcar VT 08 and VT 125 (series 613 and 612 ) of the German Federal Railroad were called due to the shape of their cabs as eggheads.

• In the film and in television technology, this expression is used for the circles and heads misrepresented, then what happens when anamorphic widescreen images are shown with a normal lens or 4:3 format.