One of my German colleagues is in town this week. As we sat through a design session this morning, he asked, “How do you say streber in English?”
I shrugged, and he said, “Go to Leo.org.” We looked in the English-German dictionary on the site, and we found the following translations: careerist, eager beaver, geek, grind, nerd, sap, striver.
So: streber. Sounds better than pencil-neck.
And no, I don’t remember why he asked me for the translation. It couldn’t have been something I did.