foo?

Jacob Gore gore at nucsrl.UUCP
Sun Dec 7 07:49:59 AEST 1986


> berry at solaria..ARPA (Berry Kercheval):
>> gwyn at brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn (VLD/VMB) <gwyn>):
>>(There is an old word "phoo", or "fooey", indicating derision,
>>that supplies some of the connotation for this usage of "foo".)
>And 'foo' has even been used in 'real' literature...
>--
>"Suddenly he would brandish a paperweight and shout `Foo, you rat!  I'll put
>nine grams of lead in your skull!'"  - A. Solzhenitsyn, 'The Gulag Archipelago'
>--

Well, Solzhenitsyn's "foo!" is, actually, a Russian expression.  It has several
meanings, the most common ones are, perhaps, "yuck!" and "scat!"

Jacob Gore
Northwestern University, Computer Science Research Lab
{ihnp4,chinet}!nucsrl!gore



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