From 'Awol' to 'Veep': The Growth and Specialization of the Acronym

Abstract

IN JUNE, 1952, United States planes bombed North Korean power plants on the Yalu River without the foreknowledge of the British ministry. In the diplomatic entanglement which followed, Secretary of State Dean Acheson, then visiting England, tried to conciliate Parliamentary indignation in an offthe-record speech which classed the lapse in liaison action as an administrative error on the part of the United States.' 'It is only as the result of what in the United States is known as a snafu that you were not consulted about it,' he said.2 Acheson's explanation caused almost as much confusion as the incident itself, for it pointed out the widening gap between British and American English. Prime Minister Churchill pronounced the unfamiliar word as 'snayfoo,' and members of Parliament remained edgy until reassured by British newspapers which offered the bowdlerized definition 'situation normal: all fouled up.'3 More recently, in the 1954 election campaign in New York State, a sign painter's blunder in Syracuse resulted in Franklin D. Roosevelt, Jr.'s being listed as candidate for Lieutenant Governor instead of for Attorney General, the office he was actually seeking. The story of the political error entered one major newspaper with the headline 'Democrats' Syracuse Snafu Worse than Republicans' .4 This appearance of snafu in political areas marks a notable rise in the linguistic level of its usage. Developed in the Second World War by army personnel as an abbreviated expression of their cynicism toward military inefficiency, snafu came to be a favorite term of abuse among servicemen. Army men were quick to extend the word in speech to any muddled situation; and this, of course, made it most choice for application in the snarls of governmental red tape. Washington bureau members during wartime adopted the word and indulged their fancy in word coinage so that snafu was soon surrounded by a cluster of derivatives, all more heightened in effect than the original. Derivative terms reported in popularity among government workers included fubb ('fouled up beyond belief'), janfu ('joint army-navy foul-up'), tarfu ('things