SNAFU
a bad situation
TRANSLATION
SNAFU = Situation Normal All Fouled Up - total durcheinander oder „in die Hose gegangen“. --- How important is this English word? SNAFU: 4,490,000 Google Hits
STATISTICS
IN THE PRESS
Barry Bonds' personal trainer Greg Anderson walked out of prison Thursday, hours after a federal judge ordered him released because of a "legal SNAFU."
(The Washington Post)
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Okay, so now you have all read about the brilliant BBC News 24 SNAFU, when the news channel thought it was interviewing IT expert Guy Kewney about the Apple ruling, but ended up interviewing his cabbie instead.
(The Guardian Unlimited)
(The Washington Post)
---
Okay, so now you have all read about the brilliant BBC News 24 SNAFU, when the news channel thought it was interviewing IT expert Guy Kewney about the Apple ruling, but ended up interviewing his cabbie instead.
(The Guardian Unlimited)
Did you
know?
SNAFU
slang acronym
Situation Normal All Fouled Up (The original acronym used another F-word. Fouled is a milder version)
A complete state of disorder and chaos. A situation in which everything has gone wrong and nothing works.
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WORD ORIGIN
There seems to be general agreement that we can thank World War II American soldiers for this acronym, which has not lost of any its appeal after all these years. The exact origin is unclear.
The website www.snafu.com claims that SNAFU was created by two Army Signal Corps soldiers in 1941. According to the story, the two were using a relatively new code converter that converted messages into five-letter code groups. One evening while making sentences out of the five letter groups, the machine printed out SNAFU, prompting one of the soldiers to come up with the associated acronym.
This and a host of other explanations regarding the origin of SNAFU cannot be confirmed.
---
IMPRESS YOUR FRIENDS TODAY
say something like:
“Because of a operational SNAFU, we had to shut down both production lines for an hour today.”
slang acronym
Situation Normal All Fouled Up (The original acronym used another F-word. Fouled is a milder version)
A complete state of disorder and chaos. A situation in which everything has gone wrong and nothing works.
---
WORD ORIGIN
There seems to be general agreement that we can thank World War II American soldiers for this acronym, which has not lost of any its appeal after all these years. The exact origin is unclear.
The website www.snafu.com claims that SNAFU was created by two Army Signal Corps soldiers in 1941. According to the story, the two were using a relatively new code converter that converted messages into five-letter code groups. One evening while making sentences out of the five letter groups, the machine printed out SNAFU, prompting one of the soldiers to come up with the associated acronym.
This and a host of other explanations regarding the origin of SNAFU cannot be confirmed.
---
IMPRESS YOUR FRIENDS TODAY
say something like:
“Because of a operational SNAFU, we had to shut down both production lines for an hour today.”
