pocket protector

English

Noun

pocket protector (plural pocket protectors)

  1. A sheath, usually of plastic, designed to fit in a shirt pocket and hold pens and other small implements, preventing them from tearing or staining the shirt.
    • 2009, J. Scott Turner, The Extended Organism: The Physiology of Animal-Built Structures, page 15:
      Common numbers like distances would never be expressed in megameters or nanomiles — it would bring us too close to the Dilbertian world of pocket protectors and calculator holsters.
  2. (US, slang, metonymic) A white-collar technical worker such as a scientist or engineer, especially in military and space applications; a nerd or someone with a nerdy job.
    • 2005, Time:
      It was a pocket-protector paradise, its culture defined by the HP way: paternal, collaborative, entrepreneurial, community minded and inconspicuous.
    • 2012, Annabel Monaghan, A Girl Named Digit, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, →ISBN, page 5:
      My dad is head of the math department at UCLA. Yes, that is where all the pocket protectors go to meet other pocket protectors.
    • 2024 August 20, M.P. Woodward, Tom Clancy Shadow State, Hachette UK, →ISBN:
      The pocket protectors were clearly jubilant. Magic could hear some celebrating in the background of the transmission.

Translations

See also

This article is issued from Wiktionary. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.