RFC 3092
Etymology of "Foo"
Etymology of "Foo" 🎀
Okay bestie, here's the doc 💖 It's RFC 3092, called Etymology of "Foo", and it's an Informational RFC dated 1 April 2001. The authors are D. Eastlake 3rd from Motorola, C. Manros from Xerox, and E. Raymond from the Open Source Initiative. The header doesn't list any RFCs it obsoletes or updates, so this one is just doing its own thing 💅
Status of This Memo ✨
This memo gives information to the Internet community. It does not specify an Internet standard of any kind. Distribution of this memo is unlimited.
Copyright Notice 📝
Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2001). All Rights Reserved.
Abstract 🌸
Approximately 212 RFCs so far, starting with RFC 269, contain the terms foo', bar', or `foobar' as metasyntactic variables without any proper explanation or definition. This document fixes that gap. 🙌
Table of Contents 📚
1. Introduction............................................1
2. Definition and Etymology................................2
3. Acronyms................................................5
Appendix...................................................7
Security Considerations...................................11
References................................................12
Authors' Addresses........................................13
Full Copyright Statement..................................141. Introduction 🦋
Okay so, about 212 RFCs (roughly 7% of all the RFCs issued so far, starting with [RFC269]) use foo', bar', or `foobar' as metasyntactic variables without explaining where they came from. It sounds like a small thing, but newcomers have had real trouble figuring out what these words mean, especially if English isn't their first language. Main character problem, honestly 😭 This document fixes that.
Section 2 below covers the definition and etymology of these words, and Section 3 reads them as acronyms. 🧚
There's also an Appendix with a table of RFC occurrences of these words as metasyntactic variables. 🍓
2. Definition and Etymology 🔥
- bar
/bar/n. [JARGON]- The second metasyntactic variable, after foo and before baz. It's giving placeholder energy. "Suppose we have two functions: FOO and BAR. FOO calls BAR...."
- Often appended to foo to produce foobar.
- foo
/foo/- interj. Term of disgust. 💀
- Used very generally as a sample name for absolutely anything, esp. programs and files (esp. scratch files). Iconic.
- First on the standard list of metasyntactic variables used in syntax examples (bar, baz, qux, quux, corge, grault, garply, waldo, fred, plugh, xyzzy, thud). [JARGON]
When used with bar, it's generally traced to the WWII-era Army slang acronym FUBAR (Fucked Up Beyond All Repair'), which later got modified to foobar. Early versions of the Jargon File [JARGON] read that change as a post-war bowdlerization, but now it seems more likely that FUBAR was itself a derivative of foo', maybe influenced by German furchtbar' (terrible). foobar' may actually have been the original form, so the plot twist is that the "clean" version came first 🤯
Okay but foo had a whole prewar history in comics and cartoons first. In the 1938 Warner Brothers cartoon directed by Robert Clampett, "The Daffy Doc", a very early version of Daffy Duck holds up a sign saying "SILENCE IS FOO!" FOO' and BAR' also showed up in Walt Kelly's "Pogo" strips. The earliest documented uses were in the surrealist "Smokey Stover" comic strip by Bill Holman, about a fireman. The strip ran in various American comics, including "Everybody's", from about 1930 to 1952. It often put the word "FOO" on car license plates and in nonsense sayings in the background of frames, like "He who foos last foos best" or "Many smoke but foo men chew", and Smokey would say "Where there's foo, there's fire". 🚒 Bill Holman, the author of the strip, filled it with odd jokes and personal contrivances, including other nonsense phrases like "Notary Sojac" and "1506 nix nix". According to the Warner Brothers Cartoon Companion [WBCC], Holman claimed he found the word "foo" on the bottom of a Chinese figurine. That's plausible: Chinese statuettes often have apotropaic inscriptions, and this may have been the Chinese word fu' (sometimes transliterated foo'), which can mean "happiness" when spoken with the proper tone. (The lion-dog guardians flanking the steps of many Chinese restaurants are properly called "fu dogs") [PERS]. English speakers' reception of Holman's foo' nonsense word was undoubtedly influenced by Yiddish feh' and English fooey' and fool'. [JARGON, FOLDOC]
Holman's strip featured a firetruck called the Foomobile that rode on two wheels. The comic was super popular in the late 1930s, and legend says a manufacturer in Indiana even built a working version of Holman's Foomobile. 🚒✨ According to the Encyclopedia of American Comics [EAC], Foo' fever swept the U.S., made it into popular songs, and generated over 500 Foo Clubs.' The fad left `foo' references embedded in popular culture (including a couple of appearances in Warner Brothers cartoons of 1938-39), but their origins were quickly forgotten. [JARGON]
One place where it stayed alive is the U.S. military during the WWII years. In 1944-45, radar operators used the term `foo fighters' [FF] for the kind of mysterious or spurious trace that would later be called a UFO. (The older term resurfaced in popular American usage in 1995 through the name of one of the better grunge-rock bands [BFF].) Informants connected the term to the Smokey Stover strip [PERS].
The U.S. and British militaries swapped slang terms a lot during the war. Period sources reported that `FOO' became a semi-legendary subject of WWII British-army graffiti, more or less the equivalent of the American Kilroy [WORDS]. Wherever British troops went, the graffito "FOO was here" or something similar showed up. Several slang dictionaries claim FOO probably came from Forward Observation Officer, but this (like the contemporaneous "FUBAR") was probably a backronym [JARGON]. Forty years later, Paul Dickson's excellent book "Words" [WORDS] traced "Foo" to an unspecified British naval magazine in 1946, quoting it like this:
"Mr. Foo is a mysterious Second World War product, gifted with bitter omniscience and sarcasm."
Earlier versions of the Jargon File suggested hacker usage might have come from "FOO, Lampoons and Parody", the title of a comic book first issued in September 1958, a joint project of Charles and Robert Crumb. Robert Crumb (then in his mid-teens) later became one of the most important and influential artists in underground comics, but this venture was hardly a success. In fact, the brothers later burned most of the existing copies in disgust. The title FOO was featured in large letters on the front cover. However, very few copies actually circulated, and students of Crumb's oeuvre' have established that this title was a reference to the earlier Smokey Stover comics. The Crumbs may also have been influenced by a short-lived Canadian parody magazine named Foo' published in 1951-52. [JARGON]
An old-timer reports that the 1959 "Dictionary of the TMRC Language", compiled at TMRC (the Tech Model Railroad Club at MIT), had an entry for Foo. The current online version, in which "Foo" is the only word coded to appear red, has the following [TMRC]:
Foo: The sacred syllable (FOO MANI PADME HUM); to be spoken only when under obligation to commune with the Deity. Our first obligation is to keep the Foo Counters turning.
This definition used Bill Holman's nonsense word, which was then only two decades old and still demonstrably alive in popular culture and slang, to make a "ha ha only serious" analogy with esoteric Tibetan Buddhism. Today's hackers would find it hard to resist elaborating a joke like that, and it's not likely 1959's hackers were any less susceptible. 😂 [JARGON]
- [EF] Prince Foo was the last ruler of Pheebor and owner of the Phee Helm, about 400 years before the reign of Entharion. When Foo was beheaded by someone he called an "eastern fop" from Borphee, the glorious age of Pheebor ended, and Borphee rose to the prominence it enjoys now. 👑
- [OED] A 13th-16th century usage for the devil or any other enemy. The earliest citation it gives is from the year 1366, Chaucer A B C (84): "Lat not our alder foo [devil] make his bobance [boast]". Chaucer's "Foo" is probably related to modern English "foe".
- Rare species of dog. 🐕
A spitz-type dog discovered to exist after having long been considered extinct, the Chinese Foo Dog, or Sacred Dog of Sinkiang, may have originated through a crossing of Northern European hunting dogs and the ancient Chow Chow from Mongolia, or be the missing link between the Chinese Wolf and the Chow Chow. It probably derives its name from foochow, of the kind or style prevalent in Foochow, of or from the city of Foochow (now Minhow) in southeast China. [DOG]
- foobar n.
[JARGON] A widely used metasyntactic variable; see foo for etymology. It was probably originally propagated through DECsystem manuals by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) in the 1960s and early 1970s, and confirmed sightings there go back to 1972. Hackers don't generally use this to mean FUBAR, in either the slang or jargon sense. It has been plausibly suggested that "foobar" spread among early computer engineers partly because of FUBAR, and partly because "foo bar" parses in electronics techspeak as an inverted foo signal. ⚡
- foo-fighter n.
World War II term for Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs) noted by both the German and British military. See [FF] and the entry above for "foo". 🛸
Appendix 🎀
okay bestie, this appendix is a big cute table tracking every RFC that uses these words as metasyntactic variables (aka placeholder names like foo and bar 🧚). We're skipping other uses that are pretty obviously not placeholders, like "vertical bar" or "bar BoF" 🙈. Lots of the entries are domain names, and that usage might drop off once the spec in [RFC2606] lands, which is a Best Current Practice for example domain names 🌸.
Each row is an RFC number, then an X under each word it uses, and the last column is just a running count 💅.
+------+-----+-----+---------+-------+-----+
| RFC# | bar | foo | foo.bar | fubar | # |
| | | | foobar | | |
+------+-----+-----+---------+-------+-----+
| 269 | X | X | | | 1 |
| 441 | X | X | | | 2 |
| 614 | | X | | | 3 |
| 686 | | X | | | 4 |
| 691 | | X | | | 5 |
| 733 | X | X | | | 6 |
| 742 | | X | | | 7 |
| 743 | X | X | | | 8 |
| 756 | | X | | | 9 |
| 765 | X | X | | | 10 |
| 772 | X | X | | X | 11 |
| 775 | | | X | | 12 |
| 780 | X | X | | X | 13 |
| 788 | X | X | | | 14 |
| 810 | X | X | X | | 15 |
| 819 | | X | | | 16 |
| 821 | X | X | | | 17 |
| 822 | X | X | | | 18 |
| 882 | X | X | | | 19 |
| 883 | | X | | | 20 |
| 897 | X | X | | | 21 |
| 913 | | X | | | 22 |
| 921 | X | X | | | 23 |
| 934 | | X | | | 24 |
| 952 | X | X | X | | 25 |
| 959 | | | X | | 26 |
| 976 | | | X | | 27 |
| 977 | | X | X | | 28 |
| 987 | | | X | | 29 |
| 1013 | | X | | | 30 |
| 1033 | X | X | | | 31 |
| 1035 | | X | | | 32 |
| 1037 | | X | | | 33 |
| 1056 | X | X | X | | 34 |
| 1068 | | X | | | 35 |
| 1137 | | | X | | 36 |
| 1138 | | X | X | | 37 |
| 1148 | | X | X | | 38 |
| 1173 | | | X | | 39 |
| 1176 | | | X | | 40 |
| 1186 | | X | | | 41 |
| 1194 | | X | | | 42 |
| 1196 | | X | | | 43 |
| 1203 | | X | X | | 44 |
| 1288 | | X | | | 45 |
| 1291 | | X | | | 46 |
| 1309 | | X | | | 47 |
| 1327 | | X | X | | 48 |
| 1341 | X | X | X | | 49 |
| 1343 | | X | X | | 50 |
| 1344 | | X | | | 51 |
| 1348 | | | X | | 52 |
| 1386 | | X | | | 53 |
| 1408 | | X | | | 54 |
| 1411 | | X | | | 55 |
| 1412 | | X | | | 56 |
| 1459 | X | X | X | X | 57 |
| 1480 | | X | | | 58 |
| 1505 | | X | | | 59 |
| 1519 | | X | | | 60 |
| 1521 | X | X | | | 61 |
| 1523 | | X | | | 62 |
| 1524 | | X | X | | 63 |
| 1526 | X | X | | | 64 |
| 1535 | X | X | X | | 65 |
| 1536 | X | | X | | 66 |
| 1537 | | X | X | | 67 |
| 1563 | | X | | | 68 |
| 1564 | | | X | | 69 |
| 1572 | | X | | | 70 |
| 1573 | | X | | | 71 |
| 1622 | | X | | | 72 |
| 1635 | | | X | | 73 |
| 1636 | | X | X | | 74 |
| 1642 | | X | | | 75 |
| 1645 | | | X | | 76 |
| 1649 | | X | | | 77 |
| 1664 | | | X | | 78 |
| 1681 | | | X | | 79 |
| 1697 | | X | | | 80 |
| 1716 | | X | | | 81 |
| 1718 | | X | | | 82 |
| 1730 | X | X | X | | 83 |
| 1734 | | | X | | 84 |
| 1738 | | X | | | 85 |
| 1783 | | | X | | 86 |
| 1784 | | | X | | 87 |
| 1786 | X | X | | | 88 |
| 1813 | X | X | | | 89 |
| 1835 | | X | X | | 90 |
| 1856 | | | X | | 91 |
| 1861 | | | X | | 92 |
| 1866 | | X | | | 93 |
| 1894 | | | X | | 94 |
| 1896 | | X | | | 95 |
| 1898 | | X | | | 96 |
| 1913 | | X | X | | 97 |
| 1945 | X | X | | | 98 |
| 1985 | | X | X | | 99 |
| 2015 | X | X | | | 100 |
| 2017 | | X | | | 101 |
| 2033 | X | X | | | 102 |
| 2045 | | | X | | 103 |
| 2046 | X | X | | | 104 |
| 2049 | X | X | | | 105 |
| 2055 | | X | | | 106 |
| 2060 | X | X | X | | 107 |
| 2065 | | X | | | 108 |
| 2068 | | | X | | 109 |
| 2071 | | X | | | 110 |
| 2088 | | | X | | 111 |
| 2109 | | X | | | 112 |
| 2110 | | X | X | | 113 |
| 2111 | X | X | X | | 114 |
| 2141 | | X | | | 115 |
| 2150 | | X | | | 116 |
| 2152 | | X | | | 117 |
| 2156 | | X | X | | 118 |
| 2163 | | | X | | 119 |
| 2167 | | | X | | 120 |
| 2168 | | | X | | 121 |
| 2169 | | | X | | 122 |
| 2180 | X | X | | | 123 |
| 2193 | X | X | | | 124 |
| 2224 | | X | | | 125 |
| 2227 | X | X | | | 126 |
| 2233 | | X | | | 127 |
| 2234 | X | X | X | | 128 |
| 2243 | | X | | | 129 |
| 2255 | | X | X | | 130 |
| 2280 | X | X | | | 131 |
| 2295 | | X | | | 132 |
| 2302 | | X | | | 133 |
| 2311 | X | | | | 134 |
| 2326 | X | X | X | | 135 |
| 2342 | | X | | | 136 |
| 2348 | | | X | | 137 |
| 2349 | | | X | | 138 |
| 2359 | | | X | | 139 |
| 2369 | X | X | X | | 140 |
| 2378 | | X | | | 141 |
| 2384 | | | X | | 142 |
| 2392 | X | X | X | | 143 |
| 2396 | | | X | | 144 |
| 2401 | | | X | | 145 |
| 2407 | | | X | | 146 |
| 2421 | | X | | | 147 |
| 2425 | | | X | | 148 |
| 2434 | | X | | | 149 |
| 2446 | | X | X | | 150 |
| 2447 | X | X | | | 151 |
| 2458 | | X | X | | 152 |
| 2459 | | | X | | 153 |
| 2476 | | X | | | 154 |
| 2483 | X | X | | | 155 |
| 2486 | | X | | | 156 |
| 2505 | X | X | | | 157 |
| 2518 | X | X | X | | 158 |
| 2535 | | X | | | 159 |
| 2538 | | X | | | 160 |
| 2543 | X | X | X | | 161 |
| 2554 | | | X | | 162 |
| 2557 | | X | X | | 163 |
| 2565 | | X | X | | 164 |
| 2569 | X | X | | | 165 |
| 2593 | X | X | | | 166 |
| 2595 | | X | | | 167 |
| 2608 | | X | | | 168 |
| 2609 | | X | | | 169 |
| 2616 | X | X | X | | 170 |
| 2622 | X | X | | | 171 |
| 2626 | | X | | | 172 |
| 2633 | X | | | | 173 |
| 2640 | | X | X | | 174 |
| 2645 | | | X | | 175 |
| 2650 | X | | | | 176 |
| 2659 | | | X | | 177 |
| 2673 | | X | X | | 178 |
| 2693 | | X | | | 179 |
| 2704 | X | X | | | 180 |
| 2705 | X | X | | | 181 |
| 2717 | | X | X | | 182 |
| 2725 | X | X | | | 183 |
| 2731 | X | X | X | | 184 |
| 2732 | | X | | | 185 |
| 2782 | | X | X | | 186 |
| 2803 | | X | | | 187 |
| 2806 | | X | | | 188 |
| 2812 | X | X | X | X | 189 |
| 2818 | X | X | | | 190 |
| 2828 | | X | X | | 191 |
| 2830 | X | | | | 192 |
| 2831 | X | X | X | | 193 |
| 2839 | | X | | | 194 |
| 2846 | X | X | | | 195 |
| 2853 | | X | | | 196 |
| 2863 | | X | | | 197 |
| 2910 | | X | X | | 198 |
| 2912 | | X | X | | 199 |
| 2915 | | X | | | 200 |
| 2926 | | | X | | 201 |
| 2942 | | X | | | 202 |
| 2965 | | X | | | 203 |
| 2967 | X | X | X | | 204 |
| 2970 | | X | | | 205 |
| 2993 | X | X | | | 206 |
| 3010 | X | X | | | 207 |
| 3023 | | X | | | 208 |
| 3028 | | X | | | 209 |
| 3075 | X | X | | | 210 |
| 3080 | | X | | | 211 |
| 3092 | X | X | X | X | 212 |
+------+-----+-----+---------+-------+-----+
| RFC# | bar | foo | foo.bar | fubar | # |
| | | | foobar | | |
+------+-----+-----+---------+-------+-----+Security Considerations 🔥
okay, the security part is short and sweet 💀. This memo does not discuss security issues at all, so there's nothing in here for you to check off, but please don't treat that as a free pass when you're building things 🫶.
References ✨
okay so this is the bibliography bestie, and it's giving research girlie energy 📚💅 every source is listed with all its details so you can go find them yourself 🧚
- [BFF] "Best of Foo Fighters: Signature Licks", Troy Stetina, Foo Fighters, October 2000, Hal Leonard Publishing Corporation, ISBN 063401470.
- [DOG]
<http://www.rarebreed.com/breeds/foo/foo.html>. - [EAC] "Encyclopedia of American Comics", Ron Goulart, 1990, Facts on File.
- [EF] "Encyclopedia Frobozzica",
<http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node=Prince%20Foo> - [FF] Foo Fighters - "The Rainbow Conspiracy", Brad Steiger, Sherry Hansen Steiger, December 1998, Kensington Publishing Corp., ISBN 1575663635. - Computer UFO Network
<http://www.cufon.org>particularly<http://www.cufon.org/cufon/foo.htm>. - [FOLDOC] "Free On-Line Dictionary Of Computing",
<http://www.foldoc.org>. - [JARGON] The Jargon File. See
<http://www.jargon.org>. Last printed as "The New Hacker's Dictionary", Eric S. Raymond, 3rd Edition, MIT Press, ISBN 0-262-68092-0, 1996. - [OED] "The Oxford English Dictionary", J. A. Simpson, 1989, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0198611862.
- [PERS] Personal communications.
- [RFC269] Brodie, H., "Some Experience with File Transfer", RFC 269, December 1971.
- [RFC1037] Greenberg, B. and S. Keene, "NFILE - A File Access Protocol", RFC 1037, December 1987.
- [RFC1639] Piscitello, D., "FTP Operation Over Big Address Records (FOOBAR)", RFC 1639, June 1994.
- [RFC2606] Eastlake, D. and A. Panitz, "Reserved Top Level DNS Names", BCP 32, RFC 2606, June 1999.
- [TMRC] The Tech Model Railroad Club (The Model Railroad Club of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology) Dictionary,
<http://tmrc-www.mit.edu/dictionary.html>. - [WBCC] "Warner Brothers Cartoon Companion",
<http://members.aol.com/EOCostello/>. - [WORDS] "Words", Paul Dickson, ISBN 0-440-52260-7, Dell, 1982.
Authors' Addresses 🎀
these are the brilliant minds behind the whole thing, so here are their contact details, all listed exactly as written 💖
The authors of this document are:
Donald E. Eastlake 3rd
Motorola
155 Beaver Street
Milford, MA 01757 USA
Phone: +1 508-261-5434 (w)
+1 508-634-2066 (h)
Fax: +1 508-261-4777 (w)
EMail: Donald.Eastlake@motorola.com
Carl-Uno Manros
Xerox Corporation
701 Aviation Blvd.
El Segundo, CA 90245 USA
Phone: +1 310-333-8273
Fax: +1 310-333-5514
EMail: manros@cp10.es.xerox.com
Eric S. Raymond
Open Source Initiative
6 Karen Drive
Malvern, PA 19355
Phone: +1 610-296-5718
EMail: esr@thyrsus.comFull Copyright Statement 💅
okay this part is legal stuff, so I'm keeping the wording as close to the original as I can so nothing gets changed by accident 🫶
Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2001). All Rights Reserved.
This document and translations of it may be copied and furnished to others, and derivative works that comment on or otherwise explain it or assist in its implementation may be prepared, copied, published and distributed, in whole or in part, without restriction of any kind, provided that the above copyright notice and this paragraph are included on all such copies and derivative works. However, this document itself may not be modified in any way, such as by removing the copyright notice or references to the Internet Society or other Internet organizations, except as needed for the purpose of developing Internet standards in which case the procedures for copyrights defined in the Internet Standards process must be followed, or as required to translate it into languages other than English.
The limited permissions granted above are perpetual and will not be revoked by the Internet Society or its successors or assigns.
This document and the information contained herein is provided on an "AS IS" basis and THE INTERNET SOCIETY AND THE INTERNET ENGINEERING TASK FORCE DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO ANY WARRANTY THAT THE USE OF THE INFORMATION HEREIN WILL NOT INFRINGE ANY RIGHTS OR ANY IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
Acknowledgement 🫶
funding for the RFC Editor function is currently provided by the Internet Society 🌸
📦 where this page comes from
- ietf: rfc3092 2001-04
- 💖 girlified by claude-haiku-5-5 on : a language model's rewrite of the original, under its terms