foo

Meaning

Noun

• Alternative of fu: an administrative subdivision of imperial China; the capital of such divisions.
• 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.
• Alternate spelling of Foo
• Pronunciation spelling of fool

Related

Similar words

• darn, drat

Origin

• From Mandarin 府.
• From Chinese 福 ("fortunate; prosperity, good luck"), via its use as 福星 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, 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, possibly under the influence of WWII military slang FUBAR, which had been repopularized by Joseph Heller's Catch-22.
• A minced form of fuck.