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The following is from yourdictionary.com. The definition is what I expected, but some of the usage examples didn't make sense to me.
Then I looked at the OED Online. It gave a second, slang, definition.
I've never heard it used that way before. Is that strictly British slang? I still don't understand some of the usages. For example, what's a bus anorak? Or a caff anorak (caff is British slang for cafe)? | |||
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A very common piece of British slang. And once it has been understood that an anorak is a boring and geekish person, then, by adding a descriptor like "bus" then we can infer that this particular anorak bores everyone to tears talking about buses. Similarly computer, train, car or even wine anoraks. Richard English | |||
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I suspect, with no proof, that the word was used to describe these types because many train-spotters wear anoraks. It makes sense as they need to keep warm when standing around on wet, windy, and cold stations. Anoraks are also seriously uncool items of apparel, which fits with the geeky image of a train-spotter. I've no idea what a caff anorak might be, unless it's someone who bores other people about the different types of coffee beans, etc. Caff is indeed slang for café, but I shouldn't think there are many people obsessing about them.  Build a man a fire and he's warm for a day. Set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life. | |||
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I don't know if my experience is typical, but the only times I've read or heard the word "anorak" to refer to a hooded jacket, it was by a British (or Commonwealth) user or by someone writing about the Arctic regions. Its slang usage was entirely unknown to me. | |||
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| <Asa Lovejoy> |
If your obsession is standing out in the cold and damp and not eating, are you an anorectic?  Local clothing marketer Columbia Sportswear list anoreks, though they seem to use the term for lighter stuff - hardly in keeping with the term's origins. | ||
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anorak Synecdoche ... pars pro toto. —Ceci n'est pas un seing. | |||
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Asa: did you mean anorek, or anorak? To me, an anorak (and the US equivalent - I think - parka) is a lot closer to the eskimo garment than any old thing with a hood. It was definitely for very cold weather use - snowball fights and so on. It used to have furry stuff showing around the hood and sleeves. Not at all just an (originally) athletic sweatshirt with a hood. I wonder if the modern day anorak is a merchandising term for what is known more colloquially as a "hoodie". | |||
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| <Asa Lovejoy> |
Just my feeble attempt at a pun on "anorexia."
I think you're right, Valentine, at least in the US. | ||
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| <Proofreader> |
If you’re bound for the hills of Iraq Better bundle up your anorak. You think it should be hot But in winter it’s not. So pack your anorak on your back. | ||
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To us, a "hoodie" is more often a description of the person wearing the garment with a hood. Another example of synecdoche. Build a man a fire and he's warm for a day. Set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life. | |||
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In the UK, whether you are talking about the people or the garments, anoraks and hoodies are different. In terms of the garment and anorak is a kind of thick hooded jacket, often, as you say, padded inside for warmth, while a hoodie is a kind of thin hooded sweatshirt or sometimes a thinner, unpadded, hooded jacket. In terms of the people an "anorak" is someone obsessively devoted to a trivial topic (if you ever get the chance see the monologue "Anoraks of Fire", it's hilarious*), while hoodies are generally perceived as teen gangs who wear the hoods to hide their faces. This last perception is, like many such stereotypes, simply wrong. It's just a teen fashion and nothing more sinister. For what it's worth i don't think anoraks have ever been fashionable. (In this monologue a train-spotter [do you have those in the US] sits on a stool on an empty stage and rambles on and on with occasional train noises and lights on the blank curtain behind him. At one point, if I recall, he disparagingly mentions bus-spotters and leans forward conspiratorially to the audience and says "Can you believe it, there are really some people who spot busses?") "No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money." Samuel Johnson. | |||
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I wonder if the modern day anorak is a merchandising term for what is known more colloquially as a "hoodie". No, in the States, an anorak is pretty much a parka (or heavy coat of multilayer construction, water-proof on the outside, furry on the inside, and a hood), and a hoodie is more of a sweatshirt with a hood. We have trainspotters, but they're called rail buffs. I'm not sure if they wear parkas or hooded sweatshirts or not. —Ceci n'est pas un seing. | |||
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You've described what used to be universally called, here in the US, a parka. In my youth, it was a parka, and never an anorak, which was an exclusively eskimo or British term. But today: Land's End, at least, is using anorak more loosely. Here's a parka. Oddly, a search for anorak at their site brings up a bunch of items, none of which even have hoods. In the US, I think it is primarily a merchandising term. Here's another example. Not many trainspotters wear that, I don't think. | |||
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Where I live, on the Left Coast, a parka (or anorak) is not a common item of apparel. I owned an old parka, given to me by a friend when I visited him on Long Island during a brutally cold winter. He laughed at the California winter coat I'd brought with me and told me I'd probably die of exposure if I wore it. I first heard the term anorak used in Germany about a garment I would call a parka. The etymology of both anorak and parka are from Alaskan aboriginal languages (Inuit and Nenets respectively). Anyway, that's how I'd use the terms (anorak and hoodie). What advertisers and marketing choose to call something is often beyond my ken. —Ceci n'est pas un seing. | |||
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| <Asa Lovejoy> |
Hey, zmjezd, I'm on the left coast too, albeit the northern left coast, and parkas/anoraks are de rigeur around here in the winter. I do find it odd that Columbia Sportswear, a company based here in Portland, uses "anorak" as if it were some flimsy piece of yuppie apparel. I guess ol' Gert Boyle's http://www.inc.com/magazine/20060401/qa-boyle.html getting senile. | ||
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Don't these people know how to index? A search for anorak at Columbia Sportswear finds nothing. | |||
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| <Asa Lovejoy> |
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Wikipedia article on anorak. | |||
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Me, too, Z. Here in mid-Ohio, we have the same definitions for coats that you seem to have on the West Coast. Working in da hood, I can tell you that hoodies are sweatshirts with hoods - usually with zippers on the front. Gangs will use certain colors of hoodies to identify themselves and others, but more commonly, thugs will all wear hoodies that blend in with everyone else so that if they get into mischief (i.e. criminal activity) they are less easily identified. Also, those hoods are a great way to prevent ceiling-mounted security cameras from seeing anything on your face. Once in a while someone will use the term "hoodie" to mean any kind of jacket with a hood, but it is really such a generic term that it's nearly useless. I'm fascinated to hear that anorak is slang for someone who is obsessive about a topic. I'll easily be able to slip this into conversation because both hubby and son are total military history anorak. (boring to me!) ******* "Happiness is not something ready made. It comes from your own actions. ~Dalai Lama | |||
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| <Asa Lovejoy> |
Then they should meet the guy about whom I posted this thread!  | ||
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I just noticed this. In the 'sixties there were two main tribes of youths: the Rockers, who rode motor bikes and dressed in denims and leather jackets; and the Mods, who rode scooters and wore sharp suits and heavy parkas. There's little difference between an anorak and a parka, although perhaps a parka is slightly longer; down to the knees rather than to just below the waist. Build a man a fire and he's warm for a day. Set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life. | |||
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the Rockers ... and the Mods Immortalized in Quadrophenia by the Who (link). —Ceci n'est pas un seing. | |||
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