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From: Rob Landley <landley@trommello.org>
To: Thunder from the hill <thunder@ngforever.de>,
       Daniel Mose <imcol@unicyclist.com>
Subject: Re: Alright, I give up.  What does the "i" in "inode" stand for?
Date: Fri, 26 Jul 2002 08:54:51 -0400
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On Thursday 25 July 2002 02:03 am, Thunder from the hill wrote:
> Hi,
>
> On Thu, 25 Jul 2002, Daniel Mose wrote:
> > Other words in this ML (and in too many other places =( ) that
> > make my own brain go rivetted and short circuit are the "foo"
> > and/or "bar", not to mention the "foobar" place holder.
> >
> > I realize that most folks In LKML use "foo", "bar" and it's dad,
> > "foobar" with outmost joy and that there is complete and utter
> > understanding of what the "foos" and "bars" actually stand for
> > in your contemporary discussion partners reasoning scheeme.
> >
> > Or is it?
>
> Well, there's indeed a meaning behind it, apart from "fucked over and over
> beyond all repair."
>
> Firstly, there was foo, way back when in the 1930s when I was a bit
> younger. Its meaning was not always technical, I think it came from some
> kind of comic strip, but I'm not sure.

The comic strip was "Smokey Stover".  Eric recently found a lot more 
backstory on the word "foo" and updated the jargon file entry.

http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/jargon/html/entry/foo.html
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