29. Everyone has run into a SNAFU at times. What does SNAFU mean?
From Quiz The Ever-Helpful Acronym
Answer:
Situation normal, all fouled up
SNAFU is believed to have originated with the U.S. army during the Second World War. According to www.snafu.com, the term originated in 1941 with Army Signal Corpsmen Don Taylor and Johnny Paup who were stationed at Camp San Luis Obispo, California. They were using a new coding machine that converted messages into five-letter words, and one night the two were playing around with making up sentences that the words might represent. SNAFU was one of the code words, and it was Don Taylor who translated it to "Situation normal, all fouled up." (That's the polite version, by the way). However, American electronics engineers claim that both SNAFU and its counterpart FUBAR (Fouled Up Beyond All Recognition - again, that's the cleaned-up version) were in use before the Second World War by telephone repairmen who were sent out to repair public telephone booths. In order to make their reports on arrival at the damaged booths, often over a very bad line, the repairmen resorted to the acronyms to indicate the degree of damage. None of them, I understand, ever claimed to have found any silky nighties and frilly undies in the damaged booths, nor did they sling mud at Fordham University or report sweet nothings and fond urges. Nowadays, SNAFU continues to be used to describe any ongoing mess.