97 lines
10 KiB
HTML
97 lines
10 KiB
HTML
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1" standalone="no"?>
|
||
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><head><title>foo</title><link rel="stylesheet" href="../../jargon.css" type="text/css"/><meta name="generator" content="DocBook XSL Stylesheets V1.61.0"/><link rel="home" href="../index.html" title="The Jargon File"/><link rel="up" href="../F.html" title="F"/><link rel="previous" href="fontology.html" title="fontology"/><link rel="next" href="foobar.html" title="foobar"/></head><body><div class="navheader"><table width="100%" summary="Navigation header"><tr><th colspan="3" align="center">foo</th></tr><tr><td width="20%" align="left"><a accesskey="p" href="fontology.html">Prev</a> </td><th width="60%" align="center">F</th><td width="20%" align="right"> <a accesskey="n" href="foobar.html">Next</a></td></tr></table><hr/></div><dt><a id="foo"/><dt xmlns="" id="foo"><b>foo</b>: <span xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" class="pronunciation">/foo/</span></dt></dt><dd><p> 1. <span class="grammar">interj.</span> Term of disgust.
|
||
</p></dd><dd><p> 2. [very common] Used very generally as a sample name for absolutely
|
||
anything, esp. programs and files (esp. scratch files). </p></dd><dd><p> 3. First on the standard list of
|
||
<a href="../M/metasyntactic-variable.html"><i class="glossterm">metasyntactic variable</i></a>s used in syntax examples. See also
|
||
<a href="../B/bar.html"><i class="glossterm">bar</i></a>, <a href="../B/baz.html"><i class="glossterm">baz</i></a>,
|
||
<a href="../Q/qux.html"><i class="glossterm">qux</i></a>, <a href="../Q/quux.html"><i class="glossterm">quux</i></a>,
|
||
<a href="../G/garply.html"><i class="glossterm">garply</i></a>, <a href="../W/waldo.html"><i class="glossterm">waldo</i></a>,
|
||
<a href="fred.html"><i class="glossterm">fred</i></a>, <a href="../P/plugh.html"><i class="glossterm">plugh</i></a>,
|
||
<a href="../X/xyzzy.html"><i class="glossterm">xyzzy</i></a>, <a href="../T/thud.html"><i class="glossterm">thud</i></a>.</p></dd><dd><p>When ‘foo’ is used in connection with ‘bar’
|
||
it has generally traced to the WWII-era Army slang acronym
|
||
<a href="FUBAR.html"><i class="glossterm">FUBAR</i></a> (‘Fucked Up Beyond All Repair’ or
|
||
‘Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition’), later modified to
|
||
<a href="foobar.html"><i class="glossterm">foobar</i></a>. Early versions of the Jargon File
|
||
interpreted this change as a post-war bowdlerization, but it it now seems
|
||
more likely that FUBAR was itself a derivative of ‘foo’ perhaps
|
||
influenced by German <span class="foreignphrase"><i class="foreignphrase">furchtbar</i></span> (terrible)
|
||
— ‘foobar’ may actually have been the
|
||
<span class="emphasis"><em>original</em></span> form.</p><p>For, it seems, the word ‘foo’ itself had an immediate
|
||
prewar history in comic strips and cartoons. The earliest documented uses
|
||
were in the <i class="citetitle">Smokey Stover</i> comic strip published from
|
||
about 1930 to about 1952. Bill Holman, the author of the strip, filled it
|
||
with odd jokes and personal contrivances, including other nonsense phrases
|
||
such as “<span class="quote">Notary Sojac</span>” and “<span class="quote">1506 nix nix</span>”. The
|
||
word “<span class="quote">foo</span>” frequently appeared on license plates of cars, in
|
||
nonsense sayings in the background of some frames (such as “<span class="quote">He who
|
||
foos last foos best</span>” or “<span class="quote">Many smoke but foo men chew</span>”),
|
||
and Holman had Smokey say “<span class="quote">Where there's foo, there's
|
||
fire</span>”.</p><p>According to the <a href="http://members.aol.com/EOCostello/" target="_top">
|
||
Warner Brothers Cartoon Companion</a> Holman claimed to have found the
|
||
word “<span class="quote">foo</span>” on the bottom of a Chinese figurine. This is
|
||
plausible; Chinese statuettes often have apotropaic inscriptions, and this
|
||
one was almost certainly the Mandarin Chinese word
|
||
<span class="foreignphrase"><i class="foreignphrase">fu</i></span> (sometimes transliterated
|
||
<span class="foreignphrase"><i class="foreignphrase">foo</i></span>), which can mean
|
||
“<span class="quote">happiness</span>” or “<span class="quote">prosperity</span>” when spoken with the
|
||
rising tone (the lion-dog guardians flanking the steps of many Chinese
|
||
restaurants are properly called “<span class="quote">fu dogs</span>”). English speakers'
|
||
reception of Holman's ‘foo’ nonsense word was undoubtedly
|
||
influenced by Yiddish ‘feh’ and English ‘fooey’ and
|
||
‘fool’.</p><p>Holman's strip featured a firetruck called the Foomobile that rode on
|
||
two wheels. The comic strip was tremendously popular in the late 1930s,
|
||
and legend has it that a manufacturer in Indiana even produced an operable
|
||
version of Holman's Foomobile. According to the Encyclopedia of American
|
||
Comics, ‘Foo’ fever swept the U.S., finding its way into
|
||
popular songs and generating over 500 ‘Foo Clubs.’ The fad left
|
||
‘foo’ references embedded in popular culture (including a
|
||
couple of appearances in Warner Brothers cartoons of 1938-39; notably in
|
||
Robert Clampett's “<span class="quote">Daffy Doc</span>” of 1938, in which a very early
|
||
version of Daffy Duck holds up a sign saying “<span class="quote">SILENCE IS
|
||
FOO!</span>”) When the fad faded, the origin of “<span class="quote">foo</span>” was
|
||
forgotten.</p><p>One place “<span class="quote">foo</span>” is known to have remained live is in the
|
||
U.S. military during the WWII years. In 1944-45, the term ‘foo
|
||
fighters’ was in use by radar operators for the kind of mysterious or
|
||
spurious trace that would later be called a UFO (the older term resurfaced
|
||
in popular American usage in 1995 via the name of one of the better
|
||
grunge-rock bands). Because informants connected the term directly to the
|
||
Smokey Stover strip, the folk etymology that connects it to French
|
||
“<span class="quote">feu</span>” (fire) can be gently dismissed.</p><p>The U.S. and British militaries frequently swapped slang terms during
|
||
the war (see <a href="../K/kluge.html"><i class="glossterm">kluge</i></a> and <a href="../K/kludge.html"><i class="glossterm">kludge</i></a>
|
||
for another important example) Period sources reported that
|
||
‘FOO’ became a semi-legendary subject of WWII British-army
|
||
graffiti more or less equivalent to the American Kilroy. Where British
|
||
troops went, the graffito “<span class="quote">FOO was here</span>” or something similar
|
||
showed up. Several slang dictionaries aver that FOO probably came from
|
||
Forward Observation Officer, but this (like the contemporaneous
|
||
“<span class="quote">FUBAR</span>”) was probably a <a href="../B/backronym.html"><i class="glossterm">backronym</i></a> .
|
||
Forty years later, Paul Dickson's excellent book “<span class="quote">Words</span>”
|
||
(Dell, 1982, ISBN 0-440-52260-7) traced “<span class="quote">Foo</span>” to an
|
||
unspecified British naval magazine in 1946, quoting as follows:
|
||
“<span class="quote">Mr. Foo is a mysterious Second World War product, gifted with bitter
|
||
omniscience and sarcasm.</span>”</p><p>Earlier versions of this entry suggested the possibility that hacker
|
||
usage actually sprang from <i class="citetitle">FOO, Lampoons and Parody</i>,
|
||
the title of a comic book first issued in September 1958, a joint project
|
||
of Charles and Robert Crumb. Though Robert Crumb (then in his mid-teens)
|
||
later became one of the most important and influential artists in
|
||
underground comics, this venture was hardly a success; indeed, the brothers
|
||
later burned most of the existing copies in disgust. The title FOO was
|
||
featured in large letters on the front cover. However, very few copies of
|
||
this comic actually circulated, and students of Crumb's
|
||
<span class="foreignphrase"><i class="foreignphrase">oeuvre</i></span> have established that this title was
|
||
a reference to the earlier Smokey Stover comics. The Crumbs may also have
|
||
been influenced by a short-lived Canadian parody magazine named
|
||
‘Foo’ published in 1951-52.</p><p>An old-time member reports that in the 1959 <i class="citetitle">Dictionary of
|
||
the TMRC Language</i>, compiled at <a href="../T/TMRC.html"><i class="glossterm">TMRC</i></a>,
|
||
there was an entry that went something like this:</p><div class="blockquote"><blockquote class="blockquote"><p>
|
||
FOO: The first syllable of the sacred chant phrase “<span class="quote">FOO MANE PADME
|
||
HUM.</span>” Our first obligation is to keep the foo counters turning.
|
||
</p></blockquote></div><p>(For more about the legendary foo counters, see
|
||
<a href="../T/TMRC.html"><i class="glossterm">TMRC</i></a>.) This definition used Bill Holman's nonsense
|
||
word, then only two decades old and demonstrably still live in popular
|
||
culture and slang, to a <a href="../H/ha-ha-only-serious.html"><i class="glossterm">ha ha only serious</i></a> analogy
|
||
with esoteric Tibetan Buddhism. Today's hackers would find it difficult to
|
||
resist elaborating a joke like that, and it is not likely 1959's were any
|
||
less susceptible. Almost the entire staff of what later became the MIT AI
|
||
Lab was involved with TMRC, and the word spread from there.</p></dd><div class="navfooter"><hr/><table width="100%" summary="Navigation footer"><tr><td width="40%" align="left"><a accesskey="p" href="fontology.html">Prev</a> </td><td width="20%" align="center"><a accesskey="u" href="../F.html">Up</a></td><td width="40%" align="right"> <a accesskey="n" href="foobar.html">Next</a></td></tr><tr><td width="40%" align="left" valign="top">fontology </td><td width="20%" align="center"><a accesskey="h" href="../index.html">Home</a></td><td width="40%" align="right" valign="top"> foobar</td></tr></table></div></body></html>
|