Talk:FUBAR

So is this an adjective or an acronym? If it's both, what heading do we use? Shouldn't we mention "foobar" somewhere? — Hippietrail 12:11, 21 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Nothing prevents it from being both... but I don't think it sees use as an adjective. Usually I hear "FUBARred", as though it were past participle of a verb "to FUBAR". Far as I know "foobar" is just an alternate spelling. If an acronym attains the status of part of speech (noun, adjective, whatever), it's probably best to mark it as the part of speech and note the acronym origin in =Etymology=. (cf. laser) —Muke Tever 16:55, 21 Apr 2004 (UTC)

foo and bar are listed as related terms. Huh? Should not these be deleted? --Enkido 06:09, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

It's usually thought that "foo" and "bar" arose as independent words from the alternate spelling "foobar". 146.145.99.210 20:40, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

I think that etymology is highly speculative and very weak, given that "fubar" is not a stand-alone, but is the final in the progression, "snafu" ("situation normal-all fucked up"), "tarfu" ("things are really fucked up", "fubar" ("fucked up beyond all recognition"). I don't think it holds water. Best regardsTheBaron0530 (talk) 20:22, 6 March 2017 (UTC)theBaron0530

FUBAR is an acronym for F**ked up beyond all recognition

So if FUBAR is a Acronym, The meaning an Adjective, And the meaning of FUBAR'd "a past participle of a verb"

What Would You Have To Say About "FUBARD"?? And the meaning "F***ed/Fouled Up Beyond All Recognitional/Reparable Disbelief"?¿?¿ Random Thought From One F***ed Up Mind. -DjFuBaR*D 3:20, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

Acronym/backronym/etymology

If FUBAR is an acronym, pure and simple, then it doesn't have an etymology. Acronyms are derived from initial letters, not from other words. If it is "presumably from earlier foo, possibly influenced by German furchtbar", then it is not an acronym but a backronym. The entry needs to make up its mind which it is. 86.41.38.95 17:13, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

RFV discussion

The following information has failed Wiktionary's verification process.

Failure to be verified means that insufficient eligible citations of this usage have been found, and the entry therefore does not meet Wiktionary inclusion criteria at the present time. We have archived here the disputed information, the verification discussion, and any documentation gathered so far, pending further evidence.
Do not re-add this information to the article without also submitting proof that it meets Wiktionary's criteria for inclusion.

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FUBAR

Rfv-sense: "Fucked up but all right". Ƿidsiþ 08:29, 5 August 2016 (UTC)

Delete. I looked, and all I found was this book, and a few Usenet group discussions. Okay, so let's analyze both of these.

So the first search result that comes up from a Google search of "fucked up but all right" is this Urban Dictionary entry (and unfortunately the second one is the Wiktionary entry we're talking about right now), and UD prioritized the unattested (and even if attested, much more rare) sense of "fucked up but all right". I don't expect much more of UD to be honest, and I'm glad that we never use them as a reliable source. I'm guessing that the user here added that definition because they found it at Urban Dictionary defined as that, in fact I'm almost certain that that's the case. But the motive doesn't matter, just throwing out there that Urban Dictionary is not a reliable source for Wiktionary entries, and I want to really emphasize that.

I looked in Google Books first, which is what I always tend to do. The only thing I found there, as I mentioned above, was this book, and if you're having trouble seeing the mention in this book, look at the search engine instead. As you'll notice, the most common definition (i.e. our first definition) is mentioned first in the book. Then, the characters/figures in the book seem to jokingly come up with a few more possible abbreviations of "FUBAR" (the two that I can see are "fucked up beyond all reality" and then, on the next page, "fucked up, but all right"). So, in the book, the people are basically just, in context of course, listing off a few other possible abbreviations for FUBAR. So that citation is extremely weak, though I suppose it could be used, but only as a last resort.

I did a search on Google News, which is usually my second stop, and found literally no references to FUBAR in comparison to "fucked up but all right" or "fucked up but alright".

The last place I stopped by was Google Groups, which is usually my last place, and I should say, especially for 1980-2005-used words, Groups does the trick very often. But not this time... I found two threads at Usenet mentioning "fucked up but all right" as "FUBAR". Both of them seem to be, once again, listing off possible or alleged definitions to this abbreviation. For one of them, they list eleven alleged definitions, with this one at the bottom, ten of which begin with "fucked up beyond [...]". They are as follows (quoted exactly as they're written):

• Fucked Up Beyond All Repair
• Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition
• Fucked Up Beyond All Reality
• Fucked Up Beyond All Reason
• Fucked Up Beyond All Recall
• Fucked Up Beyond All Recovery
• Fucked Up Beyond All Relief
• Fucked Up Beyond All Restitution
• Fucked Up Beyond All Renaissance
• Fucked Up Beyond Any Resolvability
• Fucked Up But All Right

Also, as I also mentioned above, the fact that the posts are written in a language other than English (in this case, Dutch), I don't think these would count anyway, even though they're talking about the English language and mentioning English words in parts of it. But, even if they actually were written in English, I still wouldn't count these as reliable, because the posts don't mention the definition of that abbreviation alone; they mention it with other possible or alleged definitions.

In conclusion, and based on my verification analysis, I'm gonna say we'd better delete this one. Unless someone can find durably archived sources that are better than this in places I haven't looked, or if there's a user who is capable (I mean that figuratively) of looking for hours on end through all the Books, News, and Groups references to the word "FUBAR" alone, in hopes of finding two (or preferably three) more references to the term that, by context, seem to mean "fucked up but all right", then it is not attested and should be deleted. Philmonte101 (talk) 22:58, 5 August 2016 (UTC)

Any time there's a censorable word, it's hard to find on Usenet using a straight text search, but searching for "FUBAR" in combination with "all right", I found some indication that at least a few people believe the "all right" part: "Fouled Up But All Right" and "F__ked Up But All Right", but not enough for CFI for this form. Chuck Entz (talk) 01:04, 6 August 2016 (UTC)

Comment: This completely disregards the RFV of this particular definition. But I wonder if we could possibly add a definition similar to "Used to indicate many other alleged definitions beginning in "fucked up beyond all [...]".? Would that be allowed here? Since it does seem quite a few people try to play the guessing game with this abbreviation in sources. Philmonte101 (talk) 01:49, 6 August 2016 (UTC)

If it's only "alleged" to stand for something then it doesn't actually stand for that, so it would still fail WT:CFI. Equinox ◑ 01:55, 6 August 2016 (UTC)

User:Equinox. Forgive me for not clarifying. I meant that if we can actually find 3 citations for more than one of these other abbreviations that people are using FUBAR for, then could we possibly use a single definition to collect together all of the rarer definitions (those which probably only barely meet CFI)? Or would that still violate CFI or ELE somehow? Philmonte101 (talk) 02:10, 6 August 2016 (UTC)

It doesn't make sense to me. How would you define it on the sense-line? "Any of various things that FUBAR may stand for"? That's circular. If it does stand for a thing, attestably, then that gets a sense-line of its own. If it doesn't, then we don't include it, by existing policy. Equinox ◑ 02:23, 6 August 2016 (UTC)

RFV-failed. Kiwima (talk) 18:37, 22 May 2017 (UTC)