German Words 1939-45

[Laurence Horn]

At 9:58 PM -0400 5/1/03, Fred Shapiro wrote:
>On Thu, 1 May 2003, Ray Villegas wrote:
>
>>  In reseaching the German word "flak" I found that it is an acronym
>>  "Flugabwehrkannone"=Air Defense Gun.   I have found that there is another
>>  spelling for it as well which is "FLiegerAbwehrKanonen." It was used in
>>  Germany first during WWII, 1926, and then again in 1939.
>
>The 1926 war must have been WW1.5.

Hah.  The first English cite in the OED is from Jane's Fighting
Ships, 1938, and the etymology is given there as <
Fliegerabwehrkanone 'pilot-defence gun'.  That still predates WWII
slightly.

>
>>  There is another acronym that was popular as well. FUBAR which comes from
>>  combining foo and bar and was used by the GIs in WWII meaning F.U Beyond
>>  All Repair.( I will leave the meaning of the first part to the
>>  imagination).  It is derived from the German word "furchtbar" which means
>>  terrible. It is considered to be a backronym.
>
>Is there any evidence for the backronymic etymology?
>
Seems unlikely, given the range of military acronyms related to it,
e.g. "SNAFU", which don't lend themselves to German etymologies.
Jesse has a bunch of these in his _The F Word_.

Larry