Here's an article from 2001 by Jesse Shieldlower, now NA Editor of the OED. It's evident that he was destined to go places in (descriptivist) lexicography..
http://www.clovisnews.com/trails/words_mean.html
From tsuwm's link:
...snafu" is an acronym often euphemized as "situation normal, all fouled up...
I'll bet *you a hundred fuckin' bucks you'll be hard-pressed to "often" find a military person use the word "fouled" *there.
>Then who is Jesse Sheidlower?
and so I asks Jesse: What in the world is this (other than a rather bad spelling of your name)??
Jesse responds:
Looks like an article I wrote a few years ago for the N.Y. Times, taken and altered without my permission.
and here's a link to the unadulterated(?) version:
http://www.ling.upenn.edu/courses/Spring_2001/ling001/nytimes_whatisword.html-joe (
mundus vult decipi) friday
> use the word "fouled"
um, yeah, dat's why dey said "often euphemized", innit?
(it doesn't claim the acronym aptually stands for the phrase 'fouled up')
Sounds like he was defenseless against this...shield lowered
>Sounds like he was defenseless against this
:)
or perhaps he never knew of it until today; it wouldn't have shown up if he does period searches for inappropriate uses of his name.
Indeed, Maverick, however, I'd thought the story behind the acronym wasn't arkfully true (as me ol' man claimed) but lookie here:
http://www.snafu.com/Snafu/SnafuStory.htmlIt seems it had no *real base meaning to begin with...
I posted the site over at wordorigins. See if they can come up with an antedate to this tale.
> it had no *real base meaning to begin with...
Well, to be really pedantic, assuming for now that this tale checks out, the word didn't exist as such until they had attributed the acronymic meaning to it but! :)