History Main / FooFu

AsYouKnow, "''Kung fu''" or actually "''[[SpellMyNameWithAnS Gongfu]]''" in pinyin (Chinese: 功夫, literally "achievement through sustained effort") is a collective term for a number of fighting styles which have roots as ancient as the 18th century BCE and have continued to evolve to this day. The greatest spike in popularity and variety of ''Kung Fu'' came in the 20th century; not only did the now-iconic "drunken boxing", "five animals" and "tai chi chuan" styles develop during that period, but upon exposure to contemporary western pop culture, ''Kung Fu'' experienced a veritable ''explosion'' of applications to a variety of professions, aspirations and walks of life other than the canonical ''kung''.

The term ''"Foo Fu"'' for this general phenomenon was coined JustForPun, and basically means the same as "X Fu" or "Whatever Fu". It comes from ''"Foo"'', a placeholder often used by programmers as a stand-in for whatever should be there instead (the technical term for this kind of placeholder is [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metasyntactic_variable "Metasyntactic Variable"]]). Has nothing to do with [[Music/FooFighters fighting foo]], despite Creator/MrT's [[WesternAnimation/RobotChicken confusion]].