English

Alternative forms

• FooFoo
• foofoo
• foo

Proper noun

Foo

1. (dated, fandom slang, humorous) A mock deity of early science fiction fandom; a fannish ghod.
   • 1951 November, Pickens, Pike, “Sez You”, in Quandry, number 15:

     Robert Bloch has blown his top. Backwards or forwards (or sideways) Foo ((ugh)) and Ghu ((!)) cannot be united! Does one eat chocolate cake with catsup on it? If you do and enjoy it then go off and be a fooghuist in your own little corner. You may as well worship Roscoe. Or Alpaugh. Foo fans are happy fans. Ghu isn't really helping Hoffman put out a fine mag you know. The fans who read Q are probably -- for the most part -- Foofooists.

   • 1955 January, Grennell, Dean, “Filler #523”, in Abstract, number 9:

     I imagine it must be pretty discouraging to send out a whole issue of a fanzine and get nothing back but a couple of poctsarcds.^[sic] I wouldn't know, thank Foo.

   • 2004 September, Speer, Jack, “Last and First Fen”, in Noreascon 4 Souvenir Book, page 57:

     You’ll never guess what Wollheim’s men have found!¶ A forest full of perfect echo-flowers.¶ Honest to Foo! He says ”Salad!” to them,¶ And they obediently answer back, “Salad!”

   • For more examples of usage of this term, see Citations:Foo.

Hypernyms

• ghod

Coordinate terms

• Ghu

English

Noun

foo ‎(plural foos)

1. (historical, obsolete) Alternative form of fu: an administrative subdivision of imperial China; the capital of such divisions.

Etymology 2

foo is presumably based on the fu character (fú, 福)

From Chinese 福 ‎(fú, “fortunate; prosperity, good luck”), via its use as 福星 ‎(Fúxīng, “Jupiter”) in Chinese statues of the Three Lucky Stars, picked up from c. 1935 as a nonsense word in Bill Holman's Smokey Stover comic strip,^[1][2][3] whence it was picked up by Pogo, Looney Tunes, and others. Used by Jack Speer as the fannish ghod of mimeography. Popularized in computing contexts by the Tech Model Railroad Club's 1959 Dictionary of the TMRC Language, which incorporated it into a parody of the Hindu chant om mani padme hum,^[1] possibly under the influence of WWII military slang fubar, which had been repopularized by Joseph Heller's Catch-22.

Noun

foo ‎(uncountable)

1. (science fiction) Alternative letter-case form of Foo, as a generic mock or placeholder god.
   • For usage examples of this term, see Citations:Foo.
2. (programming) A metasyntactic variable used to represent an unspecified entity. If part of a series of such entities, it is often the first in the series, and followed immediately by bar.

   Suppose we have two objects, foo and bar.

Derived terms

• foobar

Related terms

• FUBAR

Etymology 3

A minced form of ****.

Interjection

foo

1. Expression of disappointment or disgust.

   Oh foo – the cake burnt!

Synonyms

• (expression of disgust): darn, drat

Etymology 4

Alternative forms

• foo'

Noun

foo ‎(plural foos)

1. (slang) Eye dialect spelling of fool.

Anagrams

• oof

References

1. 1 2 “foo”, The Jargon File
2. ↑ "The History of Bill Holman", Smokey-Stover.com, Smokey Stover LLC – article by nephew of Bill Holman
3. ↑ "Warner Brothers Cartoon Companion"

• RFC 3092, Etymology of "Foo", Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF)

Middle English

Alternative forms

• fo

Noun

foo (plural foos)

1. foe

Tetum

Verb

foo

1. to stink