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First use appears in the US c. 1961. The sense of a "silly person" is presumably from earlier use as a bowdlerization of dick(“penis”) in student slang, particularly the Midwest.[1][2][3][4] It has never referred specifically to a whale's penis, but penises in general. Alternative etymology derives from dialectal Norwegiandorg(“a mass; heap; a heavy, dimwitted, slovenly person”).
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:[1][4]
I didn’t have any clothes and I had short hair and looked like a dork. Girls wouldn’t go out with me.
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.
1986, Stephen King, It:
"You’re dead, Trashmouth," Vince “Boogers” Taliendo told him, pulling his jock up over a dork roughly the size and shape of an anemic peanut.
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."
Usage notes
Narrowly used to indicate someone inept or out of touch, broadly used to mean simply “silly, foolish”; compare doofus, twit.
2001 December 3, Jack Price, “Re: Anybody @home?”, in pdx.computing (Usenet):
I spent all weekend dorking with the router settings with no luck, though I could get any one out of my 5 PCs on the net when connected directly to the modem.