I Just Learned What 'Snafu' Really Stands For, And Wow

Turns out CAPTCHA actually stands for “completely automated public Turing test to tell computers and humans apart” – and LEGO, HARIBO, and Twix all have hidden meanings, too. 

And my friends are probably bored by now of hearing that IKEA, ASDA, and Tesco are acronyms or portmanteaus. 

Well, sorry to them: I’ve found another word with an unexpected meaning. 

Yup, “snafu” – which refers to a situation in which nothing goes to plan, and everything that can go wrong seems to – stands for five words, and has a surprisingly military origin.

What does ‘snafu’ stand for?

Per Merriam-Webster, snafu stands for “Situation Normal: All Fucked Up” (or “fouled up”). In other words, it suggests a scenario where chaos or confusion is the norm.

The American military slang seems to have appeared in World War II – it was explained in the Kansas City Star in 1941 as “situation normal, all fixed up” and was presented as a novel word, not suitable for use “on leave”, back then.

Interestingly, in that entry, the sergeant said soldiers were torn on whether the initials were a “backronym” – a word which starts out not standing for anything but is later given words for each letter. 

“Most fellows” said the word “snafu” just “popped out” of the head of one of the members of the 35th division outfits, who he claimed invented the word, per the Kansas City Star. 

But “after snafu got pretty well spread around, somebody decided it was a bunch of letters that stood for words,” one theory reportedly went.

However it began, there was a fictional character called Private Snafu who appeared in instructional cartoons in the ’40s. 

Described as “the goofiest soldier in the US army,” Private Snafu seems to have been named after the slang rather than giving rise to it. 

And it turns out that the person who voiced his animated persona, Mel Blanc, also provided the instantly recognisable tones of Donald Duck and Bugs Bunny.

Dr Seuss helped to write some episodes 

The National WWII Museum in New Orleans shared that Dr Seuss – or, to give him his full name, Theodor Geisel – wrote “most” of the shorts.

As ScreenRant pointed out, the shorts didn’t just advise US soldiers on what not to do during the war (whatever Private Snafu was up to was wrong, basically). But on top of that, the cartoons kept animation studios alive during wartime as an essential industry. 

Episodes of Private Snafu did not have to be approved by the Production Code Administration. That led to more raunchy scenes and swearing. 

Though the Private Snafu clips are now in the public domain and can be viewed online, the museum warned that “the series does contain outdated cultural depictions that were common during the war”.