pocket protectorとは 意味・読み方・使い方

名詞

pocket protector (plural pocket protectors)

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.
   • 2009, J. Scott Turner, The Extended Organism: The Physiology of Animal-Built Structures, page 15:

     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.

2. (US, slang, metonymically) 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.
   • 2005, Time:

     It was a pocket-protector paradise, its culture defined by the HP way: paternal, collaborative, entrepreneurial, community minded and inconspicuous.

   • 2012, Annabel Monaghan, A Girl Named Digit, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, →ISBN, page 5:

     My dad is head of the math department at UCLA. Yes, that is where all the pocket protectors go to meet other pocket protectors.

   • 2024 August 20, M.P. Woodward, Tom Clancy Shadow State, Hachette UK, →ISBN:

     The pocket protectors were clearly jubilant. Magic could hear some celebrating in the background of the transmission.