foo
n. general name used for indefinite items (i.e. computer files, programs etc.) | ||||
Search Dictionary:
Foo definition was found in categories: Computer & Internet(3) Arts & Humanities(1) Government(1) Language, Idioms & Slang(2) Encyclopedia(1)
Foo Definition from Computer & Internet Dictionaries & Glossaries
| FOLDOC |
foo
<jargon> /foo/ A sample name for absolutely anything, especially programs and files (especially scratch files). First on the standard list of metasyntactic variables used in syntax examples. See also bar, baz, qux, quux, corge, grault, garply, waldo, fred, plugh, xyzzy, thud.
The etymology of "foo" is obscure. When used in connection with "bar" it is generally traced to the WWII-era Army slang acronym FUBAR, later bowdlerised to foobar.
However, the use of the word "foo" itself has more complicated antecedents, including a long history in comic strips and cartoons.
"FOO" often appeared in the "Smokey Stover" comic strip by Bill Holman. This surrealist strip about a fireman appeared in various American comics including "Everybody's" between about 1930 and 1952. FOO was often included on licence plates of cars and in nonsense sayings in the background of some frames such as "He who foos last foos best" or "Many smoke but foo men chew".
Allegedly, "FOO" and "BAR" also occurred in Walt Kelly's "Pogo" strips. In the 1938 cartoon "The Daffy Doc", a very early version of Daffy Duck holds up a sign saying "SILENCE IS FOO!". Oddly, this seems to refer to some approving or positive affirmative use of foo. It has been suggested that this might be related to the Chinese word "fu" (sometimes transliterated "foo"), which can mean "happiness" when spoken with the proper tone (the lion-dog guardians flanking the steps of many Chinese restaurants are properly called "fu dogs").
Earlier versions of this entry suggested the possibility that hacker usage actually sprang from "FOO, Lampoons and Parody", 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 "oeuvre" have established that this title was a reference to the earlier Smokey Stover comics.
An old-time member reports that in the 1959 "Dictionary of the TMRC Language", compiled at TMRC there was an entry that went something like this:
FOO: The first syllable of the sacred chant phrase "FOO MANE PADME HUM." Our first obligation is to keep the foo counters turning.
For more about the legendary foo counters, see TMRC. Almost the entire staff of what became the MIT AI LAB was involved with TMRC, and probably picked the word up there.
Another correspondant cites the nautical construction "foo-foo" (or "poo-poo"), used to refer to something effeminate or some technical thing whose name has been forgotten, e.g. "foo-foo box", "foo-foo valve". This was common on ships by the early nineteenth century.
Very probably, hackish "foo" had no single origin and derives through all these channels from Yiddish "feh" and/or English "fooey".
[Jargon File]
(1998-04-16)
<jargon> /foo/ A sample name for absolutely anything, especially programs and files (especially scratch files). First on the standard list of metasyntactic variables used in syntax examples. See also bar, baz, qux, quux, corge, grault, garply, waldo, fred, plugh, xyzzy, thud.
The etymology of "foo" is obscure. When used in connection with "bar" it is generally traced to the WWII-era Army slang acronym FUBAR, later bowdlerised to foobar.
However, the use of the word "foo" itself has more complicated antecedents, including a long history in comic strips and cartoons.
"FOO" often appeared in the "Smokey Stover" comic strip by Bill Holman. This surrealist strip about a fireman appeared in various American comics including "Everybody's" between about 1930 and 1952. FOO was often included on licence plates of cars and in nonsense sayings in the background of some frames such as "He who foos last foos best" or "Many smoke but foo men chew".
Allegedly, "FOO" and "BAR" also occurred in Walt Kelly's "Pogo" strips. In the 1938 cartoon "The Daffy Doc", a very early version of Daffy Duck holds up a sign saying "SILENCE IS FOO!". Oddly, this seems to refer to some approving or positive affirmative use of foo. It has been suggested that this might be related to the Chinese word "fu" (sometimes transliterated "foo"), which can mean "happiness" when spoken with the proper tone (the lion-dog guardians flanking the steps of many Chinese restaurants are properly called "fu dogs").
Earlier versions of this entry suggested the possibility that hacker usage actually sprang from "FOO, Lampoons and Parody", 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 "oeuvre" have established that this title was a reference to the earlier Smokey Stover comics.
An old-time member reports that in the 1959 "Dictionary of the TMRC Language", compiled at TMRC there was an entry that went something like this:
FOO: The first syllable of the sacred chant phrase "FOO MANE PADME HUM." Our first obligation is to keep the foo counters turning.
For more about the legendary foo counters, see TMRC. Almost the entire staff of what became the MIT AI LAB was involved with TMRC, and probably picked the word up there.
Another correspondant cites the nautical construction "foo-foo" (or "poo-poo"), used to refer to something effeminate or some technical thing whose name has been forgotten, e.g. "foo-foo box", "foo-foo valve". This was common on ships by the early nineteenth century.
Very probably, hackish "foo" had no single origin and derives through all these channels from Yiddish "feh" and/or English "fooey".
[Jargon File]
(1998-04-16)
| Jargon File |
foo
/foo/ 1. interj. Term of disgust. 2. [very common] Used very generally as a sample name for absolutely anything, esp. programs and files (esp. scratch files). 3. First on the standard list of metasyntactic variable s used in syntax examples. See also bar , baz , qux , quux , corge , grault , garply , waldo , fred , plugh , xyzzy , thud .
When `foo' is used in connection with `bar' it has generally traced to the WWII-era Army slang acronym FUBAR (`Fucked Up Beyond All Repair'), later modified to foobar . 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 `furchtbar' (terrible) - `foobar' may actually have been the original form.
For, it seems, the word `foo' itself had an immediate prewar history in comic strips and cartoons. The earliest documented uses were in the "Smokey Stover" comic strip popular in the 1930s, which frequently included the word "foo". Bill Holman, the author of the strip, filled it with odd jokes and personal contrivances, including other nonsense phrases such as "Notary Sojac" abd "1506 nix nix". According to the Warner Brothers Cartoon Companion Holman claimed to have found the word "foo" on the bottom of a Chinese figurine. This is plausible; Chinese statuettes often have apotropaic inscriptions, and this may have been the Chinese word `fu' (sometimes transliterated `foo'), which can mean "happiness" when spoken with the proper tone (the lion-dog guardians flanking the steps of many Chinese restaurants are properly called "fu dogs"). English speakers' reception of Holman's `foo' nonsense word was undoubtedly influenced by Yiddish `feh' and English `fooey' and `fool'.
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) but with their origins rapidly forgotten.
One place they are 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). Informants connected the term to the Smokey Stover strip.
The U.S. and British militaries frequently swapped slang terms during the war (see kluge and kludge 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 "FOO was here" or something similar showed up. Several slang dictionaries aver that FOO probably came from Forward Observation Officer, but this (like the contemporaneous "FUBAR")
/foo/ 1. interj. Term of disgust. 2. [very common] Used very generally as a sample name for absolutely anything, esp. programs and files (esp. scratch files). 3. First on the standard list of metasyntactic variable s used in syntax examples. See also bar , baz , qux , quux , corge , grault , garply , waldo , fred , plugh , xyzzy , thud .
When `foo' is used in connection with `bar' it has generally traced to the WWII-era Army slang acronym FUBAR (`Fucked Up Beyond All Repair'), later modified to foobar . 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 `furchtbar' (terrible) - `foobar' may actually have been the original form.
For, it seems, the word `foo' itself had an immediate prewar history in comic strips and cartoons. The earliest documented uses were in the "Smokey Stover" comic strip popular in the 1930s, which frequently included the word "foo". Bill Holman, the author of the strip, filled it with odd jokes and personal contrivances, including other nonsense phrases such as "Notary Sojac" abd "1506 nix nix". According to the Warner Brothers Cartoon Companion Holman claimed to have found the word "foo" on the bottom of a Chinese figurine. This is plausible; Chinese statuettes often have apotropaic inscriptions, and this may have been the Chinese word `fu' (sometimes transliterated `foo'), which can mean "happiness" when spoken with the proper tone (the lion-dog guardians flanking the steps of many Chinese restaurants are properly called "fu dogs"). English speakers' reception of Holman's `foo' nonsense word was undoubtedly influenced by Yiddish `feh' and English `fooey' and `fool'.
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) but with their origins rapidly forgotten.
One place they are 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). Informants connected the term to the Smokey Stover strip.
The U.S. and British militaries frequently swapped slang terms during the war (see kluge and kludge 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 "FOO was here" or something similar showed up. Several slang dictionaries aver that FOO probably came from Forward Observation Officer, but this (like the contemporaneous "FUBAR")
| Computer Abbreviations v1.5 |
FOO
Kai's SuperGoo Fusion
Kai's SuperGoo Fusion
Foo Definition from Arts & Humanities Dictionaries & Glossaries
| JM Latin-English Dictionary |
foo
a fawn.
a fawn.
Foo Definition from Government Dictionaries & Glossaries
| Military Abbreviations |
FOO
forward observation officer
forward observation officer
Foo Definition from Language, Idioms & Slang Dictionaries & Glossaries
| Australian Slang |
Foo fairies
(pl.) characters in a popular television commercial, “Woo worse, foo fairies, the happy way to shop”
(pl.) characters in a popular television commercial, “Woo worse, foo fairies, the happy way to shop”
| hEnglish - advanced version |
foo
foo
/foo/ a sample name for absolutely anything, especially programs and files (especially scratch files ). first on the standard list of metasyntactic variables used in syntax examples. see also bar, baz, qux, quux, corge, grault, garply, waldo, fred, plugh, xyzzy, thud.
foo
/foo/ a sample name for absolutely anything, especially programs and files (especially scratch files ). first on the standard list of metasyntactic variables used in syntax examples. see also bar, baz, qux, quux, corge, grault, garply, waldo, fred, plugh, xyzzy, thud.
Foo Definition from Encyclopedia Dictionaries & Glossaries
| Wikipedia English - The Free Encyclopedia |
Foo
Foo is a metasyntactic variable used heavily in computer science to represent concepts abstractly and can be used to represent any part of a complicated system or idea including the data, variables, functions, and commands. Foo is commonly used with the metasyntactic variables bar and foobar. The word foo itself has no meaning and is merely a commonly used logical representation that is used much like the letters 'x' and 'y' in algebra. Foo has entered the English language as a neologism due to its popularity in describing concepts in computer science and is considered by many to be the canonical example of a metasyntactic variable. It is used extensively in computer programming examples and pseudocode.
| See more at Wikipedia.org... |