[Ads-l] fud

[Ben Zimmer]

The Wikipedia article cites a 1975 example of the acronym from Google
Books, but I can't confirm it via snippet view.

---
https://books.google.com/books?id=B8XxAAAAMAAJ
"The search for self". Clothes. 10 (14-24). New York, NY, USA: PRADS, Inc.:
19 1975-10-01.
One of the messages dealt with is FUD -- the fear, uncertainty and doubt on
the part of customer and sales person alike that stifles the approach and
greeting.
---

On Wed, Feb 11, 2026 at 2:08 PM ADSGarson O'Toole <
00001aa1be50b751-dmarc-request at listserv.uga.edu> wrote:

> In her excellent article, Nancy mentioned the linkage of FUD to the
> prominent computer architect Gene Amdahl, as noted in "The New
> Hacker's Dictionary".
>
> Year: 1991
> Book Title: The New Hacker's Dictionary
> Editor: Eric S. Raymond
> Entry: FUD
> Quote Page 170
> Publisher: The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts
>
> [Begin excerpt]
> FUD /fuhd/ n. Defined by Gene Amdahl after he left IBM to found his
> own company: "FUD is the fear, uncertainty, and doubt that IBM sales
> people instill in the minds of potential customers who might be
> considering [Amdahl] products." The idea, of course, was to persuade
> them to go with safe IBM gear rather than with competitors' equipment.
> [End excerpt]
>
> I am not sure where the quotation attributed to Amdahl in "The New
> Hacker's Dictionary" appeared. Below is a citation which indicates
> that Gene Amdahl used the term FUD by 1979.
>
> Date: March 29, 1979
> Trade Journal: Computer Weekly
> Article: Clash of mainframers
> Quote Page 1, Column 3
> Publisher: IPC Electrical Electronic Press Ltd., London
> Database: Internet Archive archive.org
> https://archive.org/details/sim_computer-weekly_1979-03-29_646/mode/2up
>
> [Begin excerpt]
> Arch enemies in the mainframe market, Gene Amdahl, founder of the
> Amdahl Corp. and Jacques Maisonrouge, chairman of IBM's World Trade
> Corp, crossed swords in public last week, after Amdahl had described
> IBM's marketing techniques as FUD - Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt.
> [End excerpt]
>
> Garson
>
> On Wed, Feb 11, 2026 at 1:00 PM Nancy Friedman
> <00001b7f50001087-dmarc-request at listserv.uga.edu> wrote:
> >
> > I wrote about the history of FUD last year:
> > https://fritinancy.substack.com/p/word-of-the-week-doubt
> >
> > There's a long Wikipedia entry on FUD, which traces "fear, uncertainty,
> and
> > doubt" -- but not the acronym -- to Catholic publications in the 1920s.
> > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear,_uncertainty,_and_doubt
>

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