foo

[Arnold M. Zwicky]

in my Griffwords posting to Language Log, i quoted the Smokey Stover
wikipedia page:

"Foo" was one of these recurring nonsense words and was taken up by
World War II's "Foo Fighters". Foo may have been inspired by the
French word for fire, feu, but Holman never gave a straight answer as
to the origin.

-----

now a reader asks about foo:

Not sure if there's a historical/etymological connection, but if foo
postdates fubar (military acronym for fucked up beyond all
recognition, later adopted as the standard tokens for user-supplied
arguments early in the literature of symbolic programming languages
as foo and bar), that might be a likelier source than the French feu,
etc.

-----

anybody have information on the history here?

arnold

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org