VFRs; Yukon Liquor; Just for the Halibut

[Michael Quinion]

> VFRs--From an ad by the Anchorage Convention & Visitors Bureau in
> the TURNAGAIN TIMES, 6 June 2002, pg. 23, col. 2:  "Do you have
> VFRs visiting this year? ... Check out www.anchorage.net for super
> deals on activites, attractions, dining and more--everything you
> need to show your visiting friends and relatives (VFR's) a great
> time."  VFRs Visiting?  Is that like a PIN number?  How frequent
> is VFR on the databases?

Wearing my (rather battered and out of fashion) tourism consultant's
hat for a moment, I can tell you that VFR is a standard term in the
tourism business, and has been for at least 20 years to my knowledge.
It is one of the standard top-level classifications of travellers,
along with "holiday" and "business". The term appeared in "Among the
New Words" in Winter 1998, with a citation from 1996. My first brush
with it was while developing a museum in the late 1970s; it was well
established even then, I should think. It doesn't appear in any
dictionary I have here, most probably because it is (pace current
discussions) a jargon term of the tourism business, not that often
seen elsewhere.


--
Michael Quinion
Editor, World Wide Words
E-mail: <TheEditor at worldwidewords.org>
Web: <http://www.worldwidewords.org/>