Word: snafu
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...have news for Winston and Reader Hughes [TIME Letters, Aug. 4]. Snafu and cummfu are a bit old hat in Washington, along with tarfu ("things are really"), fubar ("beyond all realization"), fubb ("beyond belief...
...your July 14 report of reactions in the House of Commons to Mr. Churchill's quotation of Mr. Acheson's reference to "snafu" on the vexed question of the Yalu River bombings: Churchill "rolled the unfamiliar word around for a while and it came out snayfooo...
...vulgar snafu derivatives may have been American in origin . . . but acceptance and widespread dissemination of their useful addition to Anglo-Saxon idiom was peculiarly British and essentially Eighth Armyish. Your correct if prudish definition of snafu as "situation normal, all fouled up" is a reminder that there were exclusively British ascending and descending degrees of snafu. There was the "self-adjusting snafu" and the "non-self-adjusting snafu." And there was the climactic "cummfu," which, roughly translated, meant "complete utter monumental military foul...
...censure." The Laborite move was really an attempt to censure the U.S., said Churchill. He read from Secretary of State Dean Acheson's closed-door explanation to members of the House: "It is only as the result of what in the U.S. is known as a 'snafu'"-Churchill rolled the unfamiliar word around for a while and it came out snayfooo* -"that you were not consulted about...
...message given to Mossadeq was actually a copy of a message sent at the same time to Britain's Prime Minister Clement Attlee. The mixup resulted from a cable snafu. Embarrassed Washington officials explained that there were "no essential differences" in the two messages...