[Wikipedia-l] origins of foo

Fri Mar 14 12:52:32 UTC 2003

> From some American native speakers
> I've heard this as "Don't be a Foo!",
> it is usually reinforced by a barrage
> of expletives. It seems more common
> in urban areas, although heard in rural areas
> also where it is usually believed to
> be used in imitation of typically violent
> crime scene investigation dramas
> in American television shows.

Actually, the origin of "foo" comes elsewhere:

Foo and Bar 
Foo is the first metasyntactic variable commonly used.
It is sometimes combined with bar to make foobar. This
suggests that foo may have originated with the World
War II slang term fubar, as a abbreviation for fucked
up beyond all recognition. Foo was also used as a
nonsense word in the surrealistic comic strip Smokey
Stover that was popular in the 1940s and 1950s. See
also Foo Fighters for more foo etymology.

Taken from:
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metasyntactic_variable

Chuck

=====
Learn Esperanto! - http://www.lernu.net/
Enciklopedio: http://eo.wikipedia.org/

___________________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!? -- Une adresse @yahoo.fr gratuite et en français !
Yahoo! Mail : http://fr.mail.yahoo.com