Where does the word 'nerd' come from?

Dr. Seuss is known for inventing some wild and wacky words, but he also coined a very common term: nerd. According to the American Heritage Dictionary, "nerd" first appeared in Seuss' 1950 book If I Ran the Zoo. The passage reads, "And then, just to show them, I'll sail to Ka-Troo and bring back an It-Kutch, a Preep, and a Proo. A Nerkle, a Nerd, and a Seersucker, too!"

A year later, Merriam-Webster notes that Newsweek included the word "nerd" in an article about the latest slang, stating, "In Detroit, someone who once would be called a drip or a square is now, regrettably, a nerd, or in less severe cases, a scurve." To my dismay, "scurve" didn't catch on in the same way.