When did the word snafu enter the colloquial vernacular? Roughly when did the word "snafu" enter the colloquial vernacular? It was a military term, but at some point it came into fairly common use among the general population
Is using the word snafu instead of the word problem correct? 6 According to vocabulary com snafu, the old possibly offensive military term, is nowadays used to refer to any kind of problem: Snafu was originally a World War II-era military acronym standing for "situation normal: all fucked up " These days, a snafu is any mistake or problem The original, military meaning of snafu is obscene
etymology - What is origin of the phrase tits up - English Language . . . 2 Personally, I like the acronym explanation as provided by acronymfinder: Total Inability To Support Usual Performance It aligns nicely with one of the other classic expressions - SNAFU It is reasonable the true origin was military and the acronym invented to ( ~ politely) fit on some form
What is the term for words that have changed meaning over time? Snafu has not so much changed its meaning over time as come to be used by a larger linguistic community Nevertheless, words do change their meaning over time Where a word with a general meaning comes to have a more specific one, the process is semantic narrowing An example is deer, which once meant any kind of animal, but now means only members of the family Cervidae The opposite process
Word for abbreviations that have become standard words The word snafu, for example, was originally an obscene U S Army reference (situation normal -- all f'ed up"), and fad is purportedly originally an acronym for "for a day" Some terms, such as AWOL, seem to be stuck in between-- they are almost used as words, but equally almost always capitalized
Why does this abbreviation tl;dr have a punctuation mark in it? To me it kind of defeats the purpose of typing an abbreviation quickly, if I have to type the ; key too Why is tl;dr more common than TLDR, and usually used with ";"? I have read the wiki discussion but am not too clear on this SNAFU comes to mind as one which could be SN-AFU Are there any other such abbreviations which have punctuations in
Is Goldbrick commonly used in American English? I came across the slang term "Goldbrick" in the American WWII cartoon Private Snafu The Goldbrick (Warning: possibly sexist at the start, and possibly racist near the end)
verbs - English Language Usage Stack Exchange What is the correct way to pluralize an acronym? asked about pluralising acronyms, abbreviations and initialisms, but is there a standard way to add verb endings e g -ing and -ed (what are these c