ianneubert.com: Are you a techie or a techy?

Are you a techie or a techy?

While talking with a friend we came to a discussion about the words “techie” and “geeky” and wondered what the “correct” permutation of the words were.

So, seeking more knowledge, I turned to the know-it-all of the Internet, Google!

Term	# of pages returned
techy	235,000
techie	1,310,000 (5.57x more)
geekie	13,000
geeky	1,040,000 (80x more)

Wow. The undisputed champs: “geeky” and “techie”. Why is one better than the other? I must be missing some rule in the English language? Or did they just battle it out and -y on geek and -ie on tech won?

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 21st, 2004 at 8:12 pm and is filed under Computers, Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

Toni

Here’s my opinion: the “ie” ending is for noun permutations and the “y” ending is for adjectives. I’ve only heard “techie” used as a noun (though I could imagine it being used as an adjective – I just haven’t seen that happen), and “geeky” is undesputedly an adjective.

That might be complete b.s., but that’s how it seems to me!
http://www.ianneubert.com ianster

Thanks Toni! Sounds good to this techie and geeky guy. (Ha! I used them in a sentence, it’s like 1st grade all over again…)