foo
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foo¹
- /fuː/ UK
Sounds like -fu, phoo · Rhymes with -uː
Where it comes from
From Mandarin 府 (fǔ).
noun foos
- Alternative form of fu: an administrative subdivision of imperial China; the capital of such divisions.
foo²
- /fuː/ UK
Sounds like -fu, phoo · Rhymes with -uː
Where it comes from
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.
noun
- 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. Suppose we have two objects, foo and bar.
- Alternative letter-case form of Foo (“placeholder god”).
foo³
- /fuː/ UK
Sounds like -fu, phoo · Rhymes with -uː
Where it comes from
A minced form of fuck.
foo⁴
- /fuː/ UK
Sounds like -fu, phoo · Rhymes with -uː
noun foos · foo'
- Pronunciation spelling of fool [page 10:] "I knew you'd be scared," Reggie laughed. "What are you doin', foo? You must be crazy. You don't scare me." "Then why did you almost fall out of that chair? I scare everyone." [page 38:] "This is coo," said Fred. "It's almost like being there." "We are there, foo!" said Reggie as the boys
Foo⁵
Rhymes with -uː
Where it comes from
See foo. Used in this context by Jack Speer, originally for the fannish ghod of mimeography in the 1930s.
proper noun FooFoo · foofoo · foo
- A mock deity of early science fiction fandom; a fannish ghod. Robert Bloch has blown his top. Backwards or forwards (or sideways) Foo ((ugh)) and Ghu ((!)) cannot be united! Does one eat chocolate cake with catsup on it? If you do and enjoy it then go off and be a fooghuist in your own little corner. You may as well worship Roscoe. Or Alpaugh. Foo fans are hap
Thesaurus
Closest in meaning: admiralty, wealth, choo, rich, chow, gan, kiang, provident, splash, fung, ting, phu, akim, fogh, fse, foo'
Talk about this word "foo." Wiktionary, via Micwyn, micwyn.com/word/foo. Accessed 6 Nov. 2026. foo. (n.d.). In Wiktionary, via Micwyn. Retrieved November 6, 2026, from https://micwyn.com/word/foo "foo." Wiktionary, via Micwyn. Accessed November 6, 2026. https://micwyn.com/word/foo.Cite this
@misc{foo_2026,
title = {foo},
howpublished = {Wiktionary, via Micwyn},
year = {2026},
url = {https://micwyn.com/word/foo},
urldate = {2026-11-06}
}
