arnold@mucs.UX.CS.MAN.AC.UK (Toby Howard) (09/11/87)
I know about the derivation of the ubiquitous "foo bar", but
what I would like to discover is when it *first* appeared as
a term of computer jargon. I'd like to track it down. Any help
gratefully received. Replies by email please.
[This is a shared account. Please ignore the Sender: field]
Toby Howard Computer Graphics Unit, Manchester University, UK.
janet: thoward@uk.ac.man.cs.cgu
internet: thoward%cgu.cs.man.ac.uk@cs.ucl.ac.uklewisd@homxc.UUCP (David Lewis) (09/15/87)
In article <1266@mucs.UX.CS.MAN.AC.UK>, arnold@mucs.UX.CS.MAN.AC.UK (Toby Howard) writes: > I know about the derivation of the ubiquitous "foo bar", but > what I would like to discover is when it *first* appeared as > a term of computer jargon. I'd like to track it down. Any help > gratefully received. Replies by email please. > I seem to recall reading something in William Safire's column in the New York Times Sunday Magazine about the term's stemming from the Marine (?) acronym "fubar" and from an early computer instruction "BAR". But Safire is generally further off only on teenage lingo than he is on computer stuff. Anybody else? -- David B. Lewis {ihnp4,allegra,ulysses}!homxc!lewisd 201-615-5306 EDT
phk@kpdc.kpd.UUCP (Poul-Henning Kamp) (09/17/87)
foobar is a derivate of fubar, from the following family of three. all of them have their origin in WorldWar II SNAFU - Situation's Normal - All Fouled Up TARFU - Things Are Realy Fouled Up FUBAR - Fouled Up Beyond All Recognition. There was a reference to a '78 issue of Byte on my table in former days, but I have lost it. Greetings...
lawitzke@eecae.UUCP (John Lawitzke) (09/17/87)
>> I know about the derivation of the ubiquitous "foo bar", but > I seem to recall reading something in William Safire's column in the > New York Times Sunday Magazine about the term's stemming from the > Marine (?) acronym "fubar" and from an early computer instruction > "BAR". But Safire is generally further off only on teenage lingo than > he is on computer stuff. Anybody else? The story as I have it, is it started with a prof at one of the large computer schools way back when (MIT?) and in his digital logic class he'd define a signal named "foo" as a generic name for the line, then when this line would go through a complementor it would be "foobar" This was done to see if he could get some chuckles, "foobar" sounding the same as "FUBAR" meaning Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition. As a side note, I've taught a few classes and it is next to impossible to get even one titter out of a class of 75 people at the most obvious (and humorous) joke. -- j UUCP: ...ihnp4!msudoc!eecae!lawitzke ARPA: lawitzke@eecae.ee.msu.edu (35.8.8.151)
roy@phri.UUCP (Roy Smith) (09/18/87)
In article <2766@eecae.UUCP> lawitzke@eecae.UUCP (John Lawitzke) writes: > he'd define a signal named "foo" as a generic name for the line, then > when this line would go through a complementor it would be "foobar" I'm surprised nobody have mentioned this yet, but isn't foobar simply foo divided by 2 pi? -- Roy Smith, {allegra,cmcl2,philabs}!phri!roy System Administrator, Public Health Research Institute 455 First Avenue, New York, NY 10016
munir@vcvax1.UUCP (munir) (09/19/87)
> In article <1266@mucs.UX.CS.MAN.AC.UK>, arnold@mucs.UX.CS.MAN.AC.UK (Toby Howard) writes: > > I know about the derivation of the ubiquitous "foo bar", but > > what I would like to discover is when it *first* appeared as > > a term of computer jargon. I'd like to track it down. Any help > > gratefully received. Replies by email please. > > > I seem to recall reading something in William Safire's column in the > New York Times Sunday Magazine about the term's stemming from the > Marine (?) acronym "fubar" and from an early computer instruction > "BAR". But Safire is generally further off only on teenage lingo than > he is on computer stuff. Anybody else? Actually I heard it came from the army - F***ed up beyond all recognition!!
schung@cory.Berkeley.EDU (Stephen the Greatest) (09/20/87)
> > I'm surprised nobody have mentioned this yet, but isn't foobar >simply foo divided by 2 pi? > That's stupid. Not everyone majors in Quantum Machanics you know. Stephen
jcp@osiris.UUCP (Jolly C. Pancakes) (09/20/87)
In article <1252@homxc.UUCP>, lewisd@homxc.UUCP (David Lewis) writes: > I seem to recall reading something in William Safire's column in the > New York Times Sunday Magazine about the term's stemming from the > Marine (?) acronym "fubar" and from an early computer instruction > "BAR". But Safire is generally further off only on teenage lingo than > he is on computer stuff. Anybody else? This is a good time to point out that the acronyms "snafu" (situation normal all fucked up) and "fubar" (fucked up beyond all recognition) were kicking around in WWII, if not earlier. Beats me how fubar got transmuted into everyone's favorite Mutt & Jeff file names. -- jcpatilla ..{uunet,allegra}!mimsy!aplcen!osiris!jcp Do your otters do the shimmy ? Do they like to shake their tails ? Do your wombats sleep in tophats ? Is your garden full of snails ?
richardh@killer.UUCP (09/20/87)
I first encountered the term "fubar" in the late sixties when it was used by returning 'Nam vets. They were were using it in the same context WW-II vets used "snafu". For the unenlightened in our audience, they mean fubar - "fouled up beyond all recognition" snafu - "situation normal; all fouled up" or words to that effect. How fu (aka foo) and bar got into CS lingo is probably an unanswerable question. It (or they) probably had multiple entry points. Actually, my favorites are farkle, snarf, and frazits. regards, richard hargrove ...!inhp4!killer!richardh -------------------------
lee@chinet.UUCP (Lee Morehead) (09/21/87)
In article <3840@zen.berkeley.edu> schung@cory.Berkeley.EDU.UUCP (Stephen the Greatest) writes: >> >> I'm surprised nobody have mentioned this yet, but isn't foobar >>simply foo divided by 2 pi? >> > > That's stupid. Not everyone majors in Quantum Machanics you know. > > Stephen No, no, no. Foobar is simply inverse foo. :-) -- Lee Morehead ...!ihnp4!chinet!lee "One size fits all." Just who is this "all" person anyway, and why is he wearing my clothes?
kathy@bakerst.UUCP (Kathy Vincent) (09/21/87)
In article <1386@osiris.UUCP> jcp@osiris.UUCP (Jolly C. Pancakes) writes: > > This is a good time to point out that the acronyms "snafu" >... and "fubar" ... were kicking around in WWII, if not earlier. >Beats me how fubar got transmuted into everyone's favorite Mutt & Jeff >file names. Probably because the military was very actively involved in the early stages of The Beginnings of Computers, and they would quite naturally have "lent" some of their favourite jargon to the new field. And those words are intrinsically interesting enough to have caught on fast and been used furiously. :-) Kathy Vincent ------> Home: {ihnp4|mtune|codas|ptsfa}!bakerst!kathy ------> AT&T: {ihnp4|mtune|burl}!wrcola!kathy
romain@pyrnj.uucp (Romain Kang) (09/22/87)
Am I the only one who remembers the 1984 Usenix trivia quiz?
FUBAR = Failed UniBus Address Register
(and I wasn't even there. Figure that one out...)
--
Non interpone se in res magorum, nam ei sunt acuti et celer irae.
("Let's move this discussion out of comp.unix.wizards. Please.")samlb@well.UUCP (Samuel B. Bassett) (09/23/87)
. . . and a fourth, also from WWII:
JANFU -- Joint Army-Navy F___-Up.
--
Sam'l Bassett, Writer/Editor/Consultant -- ideas & opinions mine!
34 Oakland Ave., San Anselmo CA 94960; (415) 454-7282
UUCP: {...known world...}!hplabs OR ptsfa OR lll-crg!well!samlb;
Compuserve: 71735,1776; WU Easylink ESL 6284-3034; MCI SBassettbooter@well.UUCP (Elaine Richards) (09/24/87)
First saw the word "foo" in a comic strip called Smokey Stover. The word "FOO" appeared everywhere and (as I recall) there was a cat in every panel. Smokey Stover was about a fireman and his wife. My favorite (remember, it was about 20+ years ago) strip was when he talked about his wife's great new dietwhere she always knew how fattening a meal was. She sat in a giant grocery scale at the dinner table. FOO. ER
adamsd@crash.UUCP (09/24/87)
In article <4018@well.UUCP> booter@well.UUCP (Elaine Richards) writes: >First saw the word "foo" in a comic strip called Smokey Stover. > The word FOO is used several times in the 1930s WB cartoon "Porky in Wackyland." I don't know if this predates Smokey Stover or not (I remember it too!). -- ======================================================= Adams Douglas ARPA:crash!adamsd@nosc.mil AT&T:818-354-3076 <work> DSN/JPL/NASA UUCP:{cbosgd | hplabs!hp-sdd | sdcsvax | nosc}!crash!adamsd Internet: adamsd@crash.CTS.COM My opinions! Do you hear? MINE! Not JPL's. "Do not be angry with me if I tell you the truth." -- Socrates "Tell the Truth and run."--Yugoslav proverb
marty1@houdi.UUCP (M.BRILLIANT) (09/24/87)
In article <4018@well.UUCP>, booter@well.UUCP (Elaine Richards) writes: > First saw the word "foo" in a comic strip called Smokey Stover. > The word "FOO" appeared everywhere ... My favorite > (remember, it was about 20+ years ago) strip was ..... Right you are. I remember Smokey Stover from my childhood, which was about 50 years ago. That means "foo" came before the military "*fu*", and long before computers could understand names. M. B. Brilliant Marty AT&T-BL HO 3D-520 (201)-949-1858 Holmdel, NJ 07733 ihnp4!houdi!marty1
patth@dasys1.UUCP (Patt Haring) (09/25/87)
In article <1583@killer.UUCP>, richardh@killer.UUCP (Richard Hargrove) writes: > How fu (aka foo) and bar got into CS lingo is probably an unanswerable > question. It (or they) probably had multiple entry points. > > Actually, my favorites are farkle, snarf, and frazits. > > regards, > richard hargrove > ...!inhp4!killer!richardh > ------------------------- Richard, This is my understanding of how *FOOBAR* got into CS lingo (I have a copy of the old "Hacker's Dictionary" from MIT, et al): ----- "The Hacker's Dictionary" Notes on updating this file: This file is maintained at three locations. It is AIWORD.RF[UP,DOC] at SAIL, and GLS;JARGON > at MIT-MC and at MIT-AI. If you make any changes, please FTP the new file to the other location. (NOTE: Use ASCII mode in FTP to avoid screwing up the tilde char!) It is also a good idea to compare this file against the copy on the other machine before FTP'ing and to merge any changes found there, in case someone else forgot to do the FTP. Also, please let us know (see list of names below) about your changes so that we can double-check them. Try to conform to the format already being used--70 character lines, 3-character indentations, pronunciations in parentheses, etymologies in brackets, single-space after def'n numbers and word classes, etc. Stick to the standard ASCII character set. If you'd rather not mung the file yourself, send your definitions to DON @ SAIL, GLS @ MIT-AI, and/or MRC @ SAIL. The last edit (of this line, anyway) was by Don Woods, 82-11-14. Compiled by Guy L. Steele Jr., Raphael Finkel, Donald Woods, Geoff Goodfellow and Mark Crispin, with assistance from the MIT and Stanford AI communities and Worcester Polytechnic Institute. Some contributions were submitted via the ARPAnet from miscellaneous sites. Verb doubling: a standard construction is to double a verb and use it as a comment on what the implied subject does. Often used to terminate a conversation. Typical examples involve WIN, LOSE, HACK, FLAME, BARF, CHOMP: "The disk heads just crashed." "Lose, lose." "Mostly he just talked about his --- crock. Flame, flame." "Boy, what a bagbiter! Chomp, chomp!" Soundalike slang: similar to Cockney rhyming slang. Often made up on the spur of the moment. Standard examples: Boston Globe => Boston Glob Herald American => Horrid (Harried) American New York Times => New York Slime historical reasons => hysterical raisins government property - do not duplicate (seen on keys) => government duplicity - do not propagate Often the substitution will be made in such a way as to slip in a standard jargon word: Dr. Dobb's Journal => Dr. Frob's Journal creeping featurism => feeping creaturism Margaret Jacks Hall => Marginal Hacks Hall The -P convention: turning a word into a question by appending the syllable "P"; from the LISP convention of appending the letter "P" to denote a predicate (a Boolean-values function). The question should expect a yes/no answer, though it needn't. (See T and NIL.) At dinnertime: "Foodp?" "Yeah, I'm pretty hungry." or "T!" "State-of-the-world-P?" (Straight) "I'm about to go home." (Humorous) "Yes, the world has a state." [One of the best of these is a Gosperism (i.e., due to Bill Gosper). When we were at a Chinese restaurant, he wanted to know whether someone would like to share with him a two-person-sized bowl of soup. His inquiry was: "Split-p soup?" --GLS] Peculiar nouns: MIT AI hackers love to take various words and add the wrong endings to them to make nouns and verbs, often by extending a standard rule to nonuniform cases. Examples: porous => porosity generous => generosity Ergo: mysterious => mysteriosity ferrous => ferocity Other examples: winnitude, disgustitude, hackification. Spoken inarticulations: Words such as "mumble", "sigh", and "groan" are spoken in places where their referent might more naturally be used. It has been suggested that this usage derives from the impossibility of representing such noises in a com link. Another expression sometimes heard is "complain!" FOO 1. [from Yiddish "feh" or the Anglo-Saxon "fooey!"] interj. Term of disgust. 2. [from FUBAR (Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition), from WWII, often seen as FOOBAR] Name used for temporary programs, or samples of three-letter names. Other similar words are BAR, BAZ (Stanford corruption of BAR), and rarely RAG. These have been used in Pogo as well. 3. Used very generally as a sample name for absolutely anything. The old `Smokey Stover' comic strips often included the word FOO, in particular on license plates of cars. MOBY FOO: See MOBY. -- Patt Haring UUCP: ..cmcl2!phri!dasys1!patth Big Electric Cat Compu$erve: 76566,2510 New York, NY, USA MCI Mail: 306-1255; GEnie: PHaring (212) 879-9031 FidoNet Mail: 1:107/132 or 107/222
decot@hpisod2.HP.COM (Dave Decot) (09/25/87)
This is not related to UNIX. See mod.announce.newusers, including you oldusers who should know better. Dave
olapw@olgb1.oliv.co.uk (Tony Walton) (10/19/87)
I heard that "foo" meant "File of Obscure Origin", and when all the foo files disppeared from all the Unix systems around the world, Unix would die out and VMS (whatever that is :-)) would take over the world...