Dictionary

pocket protector en · NOUN

Meanings

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.
   • 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. 2009, J. Scott Turner, The Extended Organism: The Physiology of Animal-Built Structures, page 15:
2. (US, metonymically, slang) 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.
   • My dad is head of the math department at UCLA. Yes, that is where all the pocket protectors go to meet other pocket protectors. 2012, Annabel Monaghan, A Girl Named Digit, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, →ISBN, page 5:
   • It was a pocket-protector paradise, its culture defined by the HP way: paternal, collaborative, entrepreneurial, community minded and inconspicuous. 2005, Time:
   • The pocket protectors were clearly jubilant. Magic could hear some celebrating in the background of the transmission. 2024 August 20, M.P. Woodward, Tom Clancy Shadow State, Hachette UK, →ISBN:

Forms

Translations (1)

es protector de bolsillo (a sheath designed to fit in a shirt pocket)