79 lines
5.5 KiB
Plaintext
79 lines
5.5 KiB
Plaintext
foo
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/foo/ 1. interj. Term of disgust. 2. [very common] Used very generally as a
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sample name for absolutely anything, esp. programs and files (esp. scratch
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files). 3. First on the standard list of metasyntactic variables used in
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syntax examples. See also bar , baz , qux , quux , garply , waldo , fred ,
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plugh , xyzzy , thud. When foo is used in connection with bar it has
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generally traced to the WWII-era Army slang acronym FUBAR ( Fucked Up Beyond
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All Repair or Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition ), later modified to foobar.
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Early versions of the Jargon File interpreted this change as a post-war
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bowdlerization, but it it now seems more likely that FUBAR was itself a
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derivative of foo perhaps influenced by German furchtbar (terrible) foobar
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may actually have been the original form. For, it seems, the word foo itself
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had an immediate prewar history in comic strips and cartoons. The earliest
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documented uses were in the Smokey Stover comic strip published from about
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1930 to about 1952. Bill Holman, the author of the strip, filled it with odd
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jokes and personal contrivances, including other nonsense phrases such as
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Notary Sojac and 1506 nix nix. The word foo frequently appeared on license
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plates of cars, in nonsense sayings in the background of some frames (such
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as He who foos last foos best or Many smoke but foo men chew ), and Holman
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had Smokey say Where there's foo, there's fire. According to the Warner
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Brothers Cartoon Companion Holman claimed to have found the word foo on the
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bottom of a Chinese figurine. This is plausible; Chinese statuettes often
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have apotropaic inscriptions, and this one was almost certainly the Mandarin
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Chinese word fu (sometimes transliterated foo ), which can mean happiness or
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prosperity when spoken with the rising tone (the lion-dog guardians flanking
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the steps of many Chinese restaurants are properly called fu dogs ). English
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speakers' reception of Holman's foo nonsense word was undoubtedly influenced
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by Yiddish feh and English fooey and fool. Holman's strip featured a
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firetruck called the Foomobile that rode on two wheels. The comic strip was
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tremendously popular in the late 1930s, and legend has it that a
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manufacturer in Indiana even produced an operable version of Holman's
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Foomobile. According to the Encyclopedia of American Comics, Foo fever swept
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the U.S., finding its way into popular songs and generating over 500 Foo
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Clubs. The fad left foo references embedded in popular culture (including a
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couple of appearances in Warner Brothers cartoons of 1938-39; notably in
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Robert Clampett's Daffy Doc of 1938, in which a very early version of Daffy
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Duck holds up a sign saying SILENCE IS FOO! ) When the fad faded, the origin
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of foo was forgotten. One place foo is known to have remained live is in the
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U.S. military during the WWII years. In 1944-45, the term foo fighters was
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in use by radar operators for the kind of mysterious or spurious trace that
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would later be called a UFO (the older term resurfaced in popular American
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usage in 1995 via the name of one of the better grunge-rock bands). Because
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informants connected the term directly to the Smokey Stover strip, the folk
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etymology that connects it to French feu (fire) can be gently dismissed. The
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U.S. and British militaries frequently swapped slang terms during the war
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(see kluge and kludge for another important example) Period sources reported
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that FOO became a semi-legendary subject of WWII British-army graffiti more
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or less equivalent to the American Kilroy. Where British troops went, the
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graffito FOO was here or something similar showed up. Several slang
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dictionaries aver that FOO probably came from Forward Observation Officer,
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but this (like the contemporaneous FUBAR ) was probably a backronym. Forty
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years later, Paul Dickson's excellent book Words (Dell, 1982, ISBN
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0-440-52260-7) traced Foo to an unspecified British naval magazine in 1946,
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quoting as follows: Mr. Foo is a mysterious Second World War product, gifted
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with bitter omniscience and sarcasm. Earlier versions of this entry
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suggested the possibility that hacker usage actually sprang from FOO,
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Lampoons and Parody , the title of a comic book first issued in September
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1958, a joint project of Charles and Robert Crumb. Though Robert Crumb (then
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in his mid-teens) later became one of the most important and influential
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artists in underground comics, this venture was hardly a success; indeed,
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the brothers later burned most of the existing copies in disgust. The title
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FOO was featured in large letters on the front cover. However, very few
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copies of this comic actually circulated, and students of Crumb's oeuvre
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have established that this title was a reference to the earlier Smokey
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Stover comics. The Crumbs may also have been influenced by a short-lived
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Canadian parody magazine named Foo published in 1951-52. An old-time member
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reports that in the 1959 Dictionary of the TMRC Language , compiled at TMRC
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, there was an entry that went something like this: FOO: The first syllable
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of the sacred chant phrase FOO MANE PADME HUM. Our first obligation is to
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keep the foo counters turning. (For more about the legendary foo counters,
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see TMRC. ) This definition used Bill Holman's nonsense word, then only two
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decades old and demonstrably still live in popular culture and slang, to a
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ha ha only serious analogy with esoteric Tibetan Buddhism. Today's hackers
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would find it difficult to resist elaborating a joke like that, and it is
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not likely 1959's were any less susceptible. Almost the entire staff of what
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later became the MIT AI Lab was involved with TMRC, and the word spread from
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there.
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