Sunday, November 05, 2006

foobar and SNAFU

Unlike what the american army wants you to believe, foobar and SNAFU aren't derived from american military slang. Here's the true etymology, as true as they come

1. FOOBAR
Comes from the Dead Sea Scrolls[1] that starts
"Phu, Bar, Mitzvah...".


2. SNAFU

This is a difficult one. Comes for the Zoroastrian exclamation, who, as you know, are a pious lot.

" Snahr-ah(f)ura "

that loosely translates to "What, by the scat of the divine beings is this?", or roughly, "Holy shit"
The american army picked it up from the second world war refugees.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

"fubar" are (sort of) the first 5 letters of the ancient runic alphabet, Futhark:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futhark