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Snarge, Snafu

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  Snarge,  Snafu HenHanna@NewsGrouper <user4055@newsgrouper.org.invalid> - 2026-05-24 20:11 +0000
    Re: Snarge,  Snafu HenHanna@NewsGrouper <user4055@newsgrouper.org.invalid> - 2026-05-24 20:18 +0000
      Re: Snarge,  Snafu James Dow Allen <user4353@newsgrouper.org.invalid> - 2026-05-25 05:53 +0000
        Re: Snarge,  Snafu HenHanna@NewsGrouper <user4055@newsgrouper.org.invalid> - 2026-05-25 07:56 +0000
          Re: Snarge,  Snafu James Dow Allen <user4353@newsgrouper.org.invalid> - 2026-05-25 13:38 +0000
      Re: Snarge,  Snafu David Entwistle <qnivq.ragjvfgyr@ogvagrearg.pbz> - 2026-05-25 08:11 +0000
        Re: Snarge,  Snafu HenHanna@NewsGrouper <user4055@newsgrouper.org.invalid> - 2026-05-25 17:14 +0000
          Re: Snarge, Snafu Tristan Wibberley <tristan.wibberley+netnews2@alumni.manchester.ac.uk> - 2026-07-22 13:49 +0100
            Re: Snarge, Snafu HenHanna@NewsGrouper <user4055@newsgrouper.org.invalid> - 2026-07-28 18:37 +0000
              Re: Snarge, Snafu tfb <tfb@work.it.out> - 2026-07-28 19:58 +0000
            Re: Snarge, Snafu steve g <Sgonedes1977@gmail.com> - 2026-07-31 23:57 -0400
          Re: Snarge,  Snafu George Neuner <gneuner2@comcast.net> - 2026-07-22 22:04 -0400

#27842 — Snarge, Snafu

1.  Is it common for words like Snarge  to not be in OED?


(I found the whole premise of the film [Saving Private Ryan]
           (sending a 8-man team on a fishing expedition 
                 because the US military cares about the mother's feelings)
 to be Woke-induced delusion.)

2. Is it believable that a multilingual Word nerd (ace  intelligence officer)
       in that situation to NOT know what SNAFU  stands for?

_____________________

Yes, it is highly common for ultra-niche, highly specialized jargon like "snarge" to be missing from the Oxford English Dictionary (OED). While "snarge"—an aviation term combining "snot" and "garbage" to describe the biological remains left on an aircraft after a bird strike—is well-known among pilots and Smithsonian forensic ornithologists, it lacks the broad, multi-industry cultural presence required by major dictionaries.

_____________________

Yes, it is highly common for ultra-niche, highly specialized jargon like "snarge" to be missing from the Oxford English Dictionary (OED). While "snarge"—an aviation term combining "snot" and "garbage" to describe the biological remains left on an aircraft after a bird strike—is well-known among pilots and Smithsonian forensic ornithologists, it lacks the broad, multi-industry cultural presence required by major dictionaries.

_____________________

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#27843

HenHanna@NewsGrouper <user4055@newsgrouper.org.invalid> posted:

> 
> 
> 1.  Is it common for words like Snarge  to not be in OED?
> 
> 
> (I found the whole premise of the film [Saving Private Ryan]
>            (sending a 8-man team on a fishing expedition 
>                  because the US military cares about the mother's feelings)
>  to be Woke-induced delusion.)
> 
> 2. Is it believable that a multilingual Word nerd (ace  intelligence officer)
>        in that situation to NOT know what SNAFU  stands for?
> 
> _____________________
> 
> Yes, it is highly common for ultra-niche, highly specialized jargon like "snarge" to be missing from the Oxford English Dictionary (OED). While "snarge"—an aviation term combining "snot" and "garbage" to describe the biological remains left on an aircraft after a bird strike—is well-known among pilots and Smithsonian forensic ornithologists, it lacks the broad, multi-industry cultural presence required by major dictionaries.
> 
> _____________________
> 

(2) 

      Yes, it is entirely believable that Corporal Upham did not know what acronyms like SNAFU (Situation Normal: All Fucked Up) or FUBAR (Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition) meant.

While it feels ironic that a literal "word nerd" and translator is the only one left out of the loop, his ignorance highlights the rigid divide between different sectors of the military during World War II.

1. He is an Intellectual Academic, Not a Grunt

Upham is a book-smart intellectual who was pulled directly from a desk job doing map-making and translation work. He is fluent in formal academic languages (French and German) but is completely alienated from combat GI subculture. Military acronyms like SNAFU and FUBAR were vulgar slang coined by frontline infantrymen to mock the chaos and bureaucracy of war. Because Upham had never been closer to the front lines than basic training, he had never been exposed to the colloquial dialect of the common grunt

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#27844

HenHanna@NewsGrouper <user4055@newsgrouper.org.invalid> posted:

> Upham is a book-smart intellectual who was pulled directly from a desk job doing map-making and translation work. He is fluent in formal academic languages (French and German) but is completely alienated from combat GI subculture. Military acronyms like SNAFU and FUBAR were vulgar slang coined by frontline infantrymen to mock the chaos and bureaucracy of war. Because Upham had never been closer to the front lines than basic training, he had never been exposed to the colloquial dialect of the common grunt
> 

                                       Explain                                            something                                  for                                        me                               please.                          You     ,  like      I   ,     have                                    a            newsgrouper                                                           ID.         Do       you       read              via              newsgrouper?            How can you not know                         that                                            your                                     ridiculously                                                                      long                                        lines                                            are                                                      hard                                                               to                                                                      read                                                       via                                                  newsgrouper                                                                                  ? 

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#27845

James Dow Allen <user4353@newsgrouper.org.invalid> posted:

> 
> HenHanna@NewsGrouper <user4055@newsgrouper.org.invalid> posted:
> 
> > Upham is a book-smart intellectual who was pulled directly from a desk job doing map-making and translation work. He is fluent in formal academic languages (French and German) but is completely alienated from combat GI subculture. Military acronyms like SNAFU and FUBAR were vulgar slang coined by frontline infantrymen to mock the chaos and bureaucracy of war. Because Upham had never been closer to the front lines than basic training, he had never been exposed to the colloquial dialect of the common grunt
> > 
> 
>     Explain  something    for             me                               please.                          You     ,  like      I   ,     have                                    a            newsgrouper                                                           ID.         Do       you       read              via              newsgrouper?            How can you not know                         that                                            your                                     ridiculously                                                                      long                                        lines                                            are                                                      hard                                                               to                                                                      read                                                       via                                                  newsgrouper                                                                                  ? 

>>> Explain something for me please. You , like I , have a newsgrouper ID. Do you read via newsgrouper? How can you not know that your ridiculously long lines are hard to read via newsgrouper ?



           It just depends on the setting -- Turn on the [Wrap] (lines  around) setting  please.


         Long lines cause   no problems in  https://rec.puzzles.narkive.com/


It looks bad in  https://csiph.com/group/rec.puzzles  but maybe that's also just a setting (my Config) problem ------------- I can't post from this site.(pls Help!)


_______________________

All these   sites    seem to   (very gracefully)   (silently)     skip          extra (repeated)      spaces  between            words.
              

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#27849

HenHanna@NewsGrouper <user4055@newsgrouper.org.invalid> posted:
> 
>            It just                      depends               on               the                          setting -- Turn on the [Wrap] (lines  around) setting  please.


The wrap option disables Courier font.  Such a font is needed to view
many puzzles properly.  Anyway I don't come to newsgrouper to learn
yet another "friendly" interface.

But it's no problem for me!  If you can't spend the effort to make your
posts appeal to me, I'll just skip your posts and threads!  :-)
(I've got other chores almost as urgent as reading rec.puzzles!)


James

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#27847

On Sun, 24 May 2026 20:18:22 GMT, HenHanna@NewsGrouper wrote:

> FUBAR

Does anyone know the origin of the similar(?) foobar, which finds its way 
into computer programming literature? Usually as a function name, where 
the details are unspecified, or separate boolean variables foo and bar.

-- 
David Entwistle

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#27850

    iirc,  Some  Programmers in Japan  have a hard time thinking of
function names and end up naming their functions 
function1, function2, function3, function4,....  (very unhelpful naming)


David Entwistle <qnivq.ragjvfgyr@ogvagrearg.pbz> posted:

> On Sun, 24 May 2026 20:18:22 GMT, HenHanna@NewsGrouper wrote:
> 
> > FUBAR
> 
> Does anyone know the origin of the similar(?) foobar, which finds its way 
> into computer programming literature? Usually as a function name, where 
> the details are unspecified, or separate boolean variables foo and bar.
> 

           FOOBAR  is less common among Python and C++  crowd???

_____________

Yes, the computer science term "foobar" (and its separated forms "foo" and "bar") is widely considered a playful corruption of the World War II-era military acronym FUBAR. [1] 

However, the complete history of how these [metasyntactic variables](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foobar) evolved is actually a mix of military slang, 1930s comic strips, and early hacker culture. [1] 


## The Timeline of "Foobar"

* 1930s (The Cartoon Era): Long before computers, the nonsense word "foo" appeared frequently in the popular comic strip Smokey Stover by Bill Holman. The cartoonist used it on car license plates and in background signs (e.g., "Where there's foo, there's fire"). This popularized "foo" as a generic nonsense word in American English.

* 1940s (The Military Era): During World War II, American soldiers coined the vulgar acronym FUBAR, which stood for "Fucked Up Beyond All Repair" (or "Beyond All Recognition") to describe chaotic or broken situations.

* 1960s (The MIT Hacker Era): The term officially entered computer culture through the Tech Model Railroad Club (TMRC) at MIT. The students, who were among the world's first computer hackers, combined the existing nonsense word "foo" with the military slang "FUBAR" to create "foobar". They split it into two separate placeholder names—foo and bar—to represent generic components, variables, or functions. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5] 



[1] [https://forum.arduino.cc](https://forum.arduino.cc/t/why-most-of-people-using-foo-a-name-of-variable/75200)
[2] [https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/221/whats-the-origin-of-foo-and-bar)
[3] [https://swetava.wordpress.com](https://swetava.wordpress.com/2013/10/31/the-origin-of-foo-in-computer-programming/)
[4] [https://medium.com](https://medium.com/@sohail_saifii/i-found-the-real-reason-every-tech-tutorial-uses-foo-and-bar-44fa9acf4427)
[5] [https://www.facebook.com](https://www.facebook.com/groups/cs50/posts/1660341007446271/)
[6] [https://www.reddit.com](https://www.reddit.com/r/computerscience/comments/1snv3a5/why_are_foo_and_bar_the_conventional_dummy/)
[7] [https://medium.com](https://medium.com/@brij2097/foo-bar-and-the-adventures-of-nonsensical-variables-from-military-chaos-to-programming-fun-e07da4d19ddf)
[8] [https://www.munish-mehta.com](https://www.munish-mehta.com/post/who-is-foo-bar-and-baz/)
[9] [https://www.quora.com](https://www.quora.com/Who-invented-the-software-meta-names-foo-and-bar)

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#27987 — Re: Snarge, Snafu

On 25/05/2026 18:14, HenHanna@NewsGrouper wrote:
> * 1960s (The MIT Hacker Era): The term officially entered computer culture

There's an office for clique slang?

Is that a part of the ministry of fun?

-- 
Tristan Wibberley

The message body is Copyright (C) 2026 Tristan Wibberley except
citations and quotations noted. All Rights Reserved except that you may,
of course, cite it academically giving credit to me, distribute it
verbatim as part of a usenet system or its archives, and use it to
promote my greatness and general superiority without misrepresentation
of my opinions other than my opinion of my greatness and general
superiority which you _may_ misrepresent. You definitely MAY NOT train
any production AI system with it but you may train experimental AI that
will only be used for evaluation of the AI methods it implements.

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#28000 — Re: Snarge, Snafu

Tristan Wibberley <tristan.wibberley+netnews2@alumni.manchester.ac.uk> posted:

> On 25/05/2026 18:14, HenHanna@NewsGrouper wrote:
> > * 1960s (The MIT Hacker Era): The term officially entered computer culture
> 
> There's an office for clique slang?
> 
> Is that a part of the ministry of fun?
> 


>>> 1960s (The MIT Hacker Era): The term officially entered computer culture

This makes sense because  the Hackers of both coasts (and in between)  maintained an official Jargon file.


This is good  quiz question: -- which is earlier?  The Jargon file, or Usenet?



--
Tristan Wibberley

The message body is Copyright (C) 2026 Tristan Wibberley except
citations and quotations noted. All Rights Reserved except that you may,
of course, cite it academically giving credit to me, distribute it
verbatim as part of a usenet system or its archives, and use it to
promote my greatness and general superiority without misrepresentation
of my opinions other than my opinion of my greatness and general
superiority which you may misrepresent. You definitely MAY NOT train
any production AI system with it but you may train experimental AI that
will only be used for evaluation of the AI methods it implements.


   ---------- nice bit about  2 kinds of  AI's --- Good luck with that !!!

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#28001 — Re: Snarge, Snafu

HenHanna@NewsGrouper <user4055@newsgrouper.org.invalid> wrote:

> This is good  quiz question: -- which is earlier?  The Jargon file, or Usenet?
> 

Jargon file.


-- 
tfeb.org/computer/

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#28006 — Re: Snarge, Snafu

Tristan Wibberley <tristan.wibberley+netnews2@alumni.manchester.ac.uk>
writes:

> On 25/05/2026 18:14, HenHanna@NewsGrouper wrote:
>> * 1960s (The MIT Hacker Era): The term officially entered computer culture
>
> There's an office for clique slang?
>
> Is that a part of the ministry of fun?

I think this is an acronym of life. SNAF: Situation Normal All Fucked
Up; FUBAR: Fucked up Beyond Recognition.


Roger Wilco my friend!

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#27989

On Mon, 25 May 2026 17:14:29 GMT, HenHanna@NewsGrouper
<user4055@newsgrouper.org.invalid> wrote:


>    iirc,  Some  Programmers in Japan  have a hard time thinking of
>function names and end up naming their functions 
>function1, function2, function3, function4,....  (very unhelpful naming)

Sinclair:  Ready?

Delenn  :  Why do your people always ask if someone is "ready" 
           right before you're going to do something massively
           unwise?

Sinclair:  Tradition.

   -- Babylon 5 s3e16 "War Without End"

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