Dork vs Dingus - What's the difference?

As a proper noun dork

is ellis island records indicate people registering as early as 1907 with dork as their last name [http://ellisislandorg/search/matchmoreasp?lnm=dork&plnm=dork&first_kind=1&kind=exact&offset=0&dwpdone=1].

As a noun dingus is

something whose name is either unknown or forgotten; a thingamajig.

dork

English

Etymology 1

US 1960s, sense of "silly person" presumably from earlier use as bowdlerization of Lawrence Poston, “ Some Problems in the Study of Campus Slang,” American Speech 39, no. 2 (May 1964) (JSTOR 453113): p. 118.Historical Dictionary of American Slang, v. 1, A-G, edited by Jonathan Lighter (New York: Random House, 1994), p. 638.

Noun

(en noun)

* 1962 , Jerome Weidman, The Sound of Bow Bells page 362:

As a matter of fact, this slob was full of information today. He told me why we Jews have different dorks .

* 2005 , Mike Judge, Reading Sucks: The Collected Works of Beavis and Butthead :

"There's that dork whose wife cut off his dork ." And when people ask him for an autograph he writes, "Best of luck to Betsy. Signed, the guy whose wife cut off his penis."

* 1962 , Alain Robbe-Grillet, Last year at Marienbad page 167:

I entitled the piece "Dorky", dork being slang for a person who does not belong to popular groups, usually an outsider, an odd person, sometimes inept, other times cranky.

* 1967 , Don Moser and Jerry Cohen, The Pied Piper of Tucson:

I didn’t have any clothes and I had short hair and looked like a dork . Girls wouldn’t go out with me.

Usage notes

Narrowly used to indicate someone inept or out of touch, broadly used to mean simply “silly, foolish”; compare (doofus), (twit).

Derived terms

* dorkface * to dorkify * dorkwad * dorky

Synonyms

* See also * See also

Etymology 2

Uncertain; apparently from (etyl). See (dirk).

Noun

(en noun)

(label)

References

dingus

English

Noun

(es)

Something whose name is either unknown or forgotten; a thingamajig.

* 1953 , (Raymond Chandler), The Long Goodbye , Penguin 2010, p. 29:

I wet the rod and measured the stuff into the top and and by that time the water was steaming. I filled the lower half of the dingus and set it on the flame.

* 1979 , (Kyril Bonfiglioli), After You with the Pistol , Penguin 2001, p. 241:

‘Say, what’s that dingus you Britishers wear when you’re playing cricket?’

A fool or incompetent person.

I just lost my keys again. Now I feel like a dingus .

(slang, vulgar) penis

* 1970 , Don Tracy, The Last Boat Out of Cincinnati , Trident Press (1970), ISBN 9780671270568, page 74:

"He got mad at me because his dingus wouldn’t come up for him — too drunk, I guess.