Etymology

foo

F4O1O1

Today it means: 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. Full definition →

Mandarin 府
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foo · noun1

  1. Mandarin · derived from府
  2. English todayfoo

From Mandarin 府 (fǔ).

foo · noun2

  1. Chinese · derived from福“fortunate; prosperity, good luck”
  2. English todayfoo

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, whence it was picked up by Pogo, Looney Tunes, and others. Used by Jack Speer as the name of a mock god of mimeography in the 1930s. 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 Buddhist chant om mani padme hum, possibly under the influence of WWII military slang FUBAR, which had been repopularized by Joseph Heller's Catch-22.

foo · interjection3

A minced form of fuck.

Foo · proper noun4

See foo. Used in this context by Jack Speer, originally for the fannish ghod of mimeography in the 1930s.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.