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It is possible that ''foobar'' is a playful [[allusion]]<ref name="dictionary" /> to the [[World War II]]-era military slang [[List of military slang terms#FUBAR|FUBAR]] (''Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition)''.<ref name="dictionary">{{Cite web|url=https://www.dictionary.com/e/foo/|title=What does foo mean?|publisher=[[Dictionary.com]]|access-date=2019-08-17}}</ref>
Note however that the word ''foopaw'' was a Nantucket dialect word for a bungled job, apparently derived from the French ''faux pas''
According to an [[Internet Engineering Task Force]] [[Request for Comments|RFC]], the word FOO originated as a [[nonsense word]] with its earliest documented use in the 1930s comic ''[[Smokey Stover]]'' by [[Bill Holman (cartoonist)|Bill Holman]].<ref name="rfc30922">{{cite web|last1=Eastlake|first1=D|last2=Manros|first2=C|last3=Raymond|first3=E|title=Etymology of "Foo"|url=http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3092.txt|website=The Internet Engineering Task Force|accessdate=17 April 2016}}</ref> Holman states that he used the word due to having seen it on the bottom of a jade Chinese figurine in [[Chinatown, San Francisco|San Francisco Chinatown]], purportedly signifying "good luck".<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.smokey-stover.com/history.html|title=The History of Bill Holman|date=2007-06-13|publisher=[[Smokey Stover]]|access-date=2019-08-17}}</ref> If true, this is presumably related to the Chinese word ''[[Fu (character)|fu]]'' ("{{lang|zh|福}}", sometimes transliterated ''foo'', as in ''[[Chinese guardian lions|foo dog]]''), which can mean ''happiness'' or ''blessing''.<ref>Mieke Matthyssen, "Chinese happiness: A proverbial approach to popular philosophies of life", p. 190, ch. 9 in, Gerda Wielander, Derek Hird (eds), ''Chinese Discourses on Happiness'', Hong Kong University Press, 2018 {{ISBN|9888455729}}.</ref>
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