Fubar
Fubar (also foobar ) is an Anglo-American word used to describe, for example, bad situations, devastating accidents, terrible injuries or even less bad, negative developments. Its origin cannot be precisely determined; the word is probably an acronym for fucked up beyond all recognition ( English , literally something like "shit beyond everything imaginable", in the sense of "an unimaginable mess").
Word origin
A common explanation of the word is the derivation from the time of the Second World War . There fubar was used by soldiers of the US Army as an acronym for fucked up beyond all recognition (Eng. "Mutilated beyond recognition "), which was particularly true of war injuries. Another explanation is fucked up beyond all repair , which can be translated as “completely over” and is a mockery of the official military expression damaged beyond repair for an economic total loss. This expression could be applied to machines, airplanes and vehicles as well as to failed love relationships.
Equally true is the translation recognition = recognition the importance of a hopeless appearing for frontline soldiers fighting action or suffered disaster to have survived without help or recognition of higher military authorities.
Since fuck (ed) is a more vulgar expression, the word is sometimes replaced with fouled , and all with any . There are also many other examples of suitable word substitutions, but these obviously all came about later.
Some sources suspect that fubar is derived from the German term “terrible”. According to this, the American soldiers had problems with the pronunciation of the "rcht" during World War II and this was the result of this softened form of pronunciation. Other sources hold this again to be a pseudo-etymology , since there is earlier evidence for the existence of the word foo and this could be taken as the origin for foobar . But it is also conceivable that the origin of the word comes from the French faux pas .
Foo
Already in the 1930s, "Foo" appears in comic Smokey Stover of Bill Holman , often on license plates or dialogues. Holman allegedly found it on a Chinese porcelain figure as 福 ( Chin. Fú, "luck" or "bliss"). The reception by the audience was probably facilitated by the existing words fool (German: " stupid ") and feh (Yiddish exclamation of disgust).
In the 1938 cartoon "The Daffy Doc", the predecessor of Daffy Duck , by Warner Brothers , the duck holds a sign that reads "SILENCE IS FOO!" The words came Foo and Bar in the comic Pogo by Walt Kelly ago.
Foo can also be found in the term Foo-Fighter , also from the Second World War, which referred to unknown phenomena seen by pilots. The expression can be found in contemporary pop culture as the name of the American rock band Foo Fighters .
Furthermore was Foo reportedly one of British soldiers for graffiti -used word. Where the British troops withdrew, there was often a Foo was here (English for "Foo was here"). Forward Observation Officer (English, artillery observer ) is seen as the resulting backronym .
Almost forty years later, Paul Dickson, in his book Words, quotes an unnamed British naval magazine that wrote the following in 1946:
“Mr. Foo is a mysterious Second World War product, gifted with bitter omniscience and sarcasm. "
"Mr. Foo is a mysterious product of World War II, blessed with bitter omniscience and sarcasm."
Foo, bar and fubar in later use
"No longer needed"
Fubar can denote something unrecognizable, unusable, or even disgusting. Especially when this condition has arisen through manipulation, i.e. through a process that has destroyed or distorted something useful in itself. Machines destroyed by accidents or misuse can serve as an example. Even projects that are made worse by the zealous but haphazard use of incompetent people until they ultimately only deliver useless results.
Foo in the IT environment
In information technology , the terms foo , bar and foobar are also used as placeholders and example names ( metasyntactic variables ) for routines, functions, processes, variable names , etc. If, in an example, three placeholder names are required, one often chooses foo, bar, baz .
The name of the freeware audio player foobar2000 is also based on the placeholders “foo” and “bar”.
Examples of fubar in film and television
- In the animated short film of the US Army from 1944 The Three Brothers (English, The three brothers, directed by Friz Freleng ), a character was called Fubar. He had two brothers, Private Snafu and Tarfu .
- In the arm wrestling film "Over the Top" with Sylvester Stallone, a very animal and unkempt-looking participant named John "Grizzly" wears a tank top called "FUBAR"
- In Tango & Cash , from 1989 with Sylvester Stallone and Kurt Russell in the leading roles, the expression is also used: both are in prison, whereby they have an escape route that neither of them trusts, which they call "Fubar", but use anyway. In the German dubbing, however, the expression "Fubak" is used for "terribly bad to get your ass full".
- In the 1994 film Mr. Bill , the term is used frequently by recruits attending Bill Rago's class.
- In the 1998 film Saving Private Ryan , the term runs through several scenes in the film. The rescue mission is mistaken for Fubar by some soldiers. A well-read soldier tries to inquire about the meaning of the term. One answer was: “You have to ask the Germans”, which the authors mean as a return to the German expressions “Pfui-bah” or “terrible”. In addition, in a detailed dialogue between the soldiers, the crash of an airplane and the associated death of numerous men is cited as an example for Fubar. Towards the end of the film - just before the defense of a bridge - “fucked up beyond all recognition” is indeed used to explain the word.
- In the 2001 mini-series Band of Brothers , the soldiers express their horror in several episodes with Fubar.
- Fubar is the title of a Canadian mockumentary published in 2002.
- The term fubar is also used by Stephen King in the novels Dreamcatcher and The Arena .
- The term is also used in the 2012 film The Deep Blue Sea . In this case too, “fucked up beyond all recognition” is used as an explanation.
- In the third episode of the second season of the television series Fargo , the term is used without explanation, only with reference to the military, in the first conversation between the police officers who were scheduled to conduct the murders.
Derivatives
- Fubar found its way into the VAX computer architecture as a Failed UniBus Address Register .
See also
literature
- Paul Dickson: Words - a connoisseur's collection of old and new, weird and wonderful, useful and outlandish words. Delacorte Press, New York 1982, ISBN 0-440-09606-5 .
