trekkie
(ˈtrɛkɪ)
[f. trek n. + -ie.]
1. S. Afr. A small group of trekkers.
| 1888 J. Bird tr. D. P. Bezuidenhout's Narrative in Annals of Natal I. 367 Five men were first sent forward to seek a road to the Drakensberg... A small ‘trekkie’ (party of emigrants) had preceded us. 1953 J. Collin-Smith Locusts & Wild Honey i. i. 10 It was a bright autumn morning when we had inspanned the sixteen oxen, and the wagon wheels had turned, and the little trekkie had started away. |
2. Also Trekkie. An admirer of the U.S. science fiction television programme Star Trek; hence, a space-traveller; one interested (trivially) in space travel.
In S. Africa the form trekker is also used for this sense.
| 1976 New Yorker 16 Feb. 39 (caption) Of course, I didn't know George was a Trekkie when I married him. 1977 Time 15 Aug. 50/2 Berry admits that his first trekkies would not know where they might emerge or if they would ever get back. 1978 Sunday Sun (Brisbane) 17 Sept. 45/3 Fans—called Trekkies—still number in their tens of thousands. 1981 Space World Aug.–Sept. 6/3 Many of the [L-5] society's other members were considered space Trekkies more interested in social experimentation than in technology. 1983 Oxf. Univ. Press (N.Y.) Spring Catal. 27 The audience for science fiction now runs the gamut from the high school ‘trekkie’ to the serious literary scholar. |