foobar

   [very common] Another widely used {metasyntactic variable}; see {foo}
   for  etymology.  Probably  originally  propagated  through  DECsystem
   manuals  by  Digital Equipment Corporation ({DEC}) in 1960s and early
   1970s;  confirmed  sightings  there  go  back to 1972. Hackers do not
   generally  use  this  to  mean  {FUBAR} in either the slang or jargon
   sense.  See  also  {Fred  Foobar}.  In  RFC1639, "FOOBAR" was made an
   abbreviation  for  "FTP Operation Over Big Address Records", but this
   was  an  obvious  {backronym}.  It  has been plausibly suggested that
   "foobar"  spread  among  early  computer  engineers partly because of
   FUBAR and partly because "foo bar" parses in electronics techspeak as
   an  inverted  foo  signal;  if  a  digital signal is active low (so a
   negative   or   zero-voltage  condition  represents  a  "1")  then  a
   horizontal bar is commonly placed over the signal label.

[glossary]
[Reference(s) to this entry by made by: {bar}{foo}{FUBAR}{kluge}{metasyntactic variable}{quux}{waldo}]