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Re: APT-Fu 0.2.3



Miles Bader <miles@lsi.nec.co.jp> wrote:
> 
> FWIW, the `fu' in kung-fu means something like style or technique, so
> apt-fu sort of makes sense if you think of as a tool for doing cool
> things using the power of apt... :-)

I'm afraid that although the character `fu' has many meanings, but
style or technique isn't one of them.

Here are the rough translations of the various meanings of `fu' in my
dictionary:

a1) Opposite of a woman, that is, a man.
a2) An adult man.
a3) A farming method in the Zhou dynasty (1000BC-221BC).

b1) Pronoun in the second person.
b2) Demonstrative prnoun, as in `this' or `these'.
b3) Mortal man, as opposed to the supernatural.
b4) Denotes exclamation at the end of a sentence.
b5) Denotes interrogation at the end of a sentence.
b6) Used in the beginning of a sentence, has no meaning.
b7) Used in the middle of a sentence, has no meaning.

The word kung-fu originally refers to the time consumed by performing
tasks.  The present-day meaning comes from the fact that martial art
usually requires years/decades of training, which is a lot of kung-fu.

In this sense the character has no meaning.  Although kung-fu has
also been used to refer to man-hours where `fu' presumably refers to
man, but the only usage I know is from the Three Kingdoms period
(~200AD) and it is probably not related to the present-day meaning.

Therefore, `fu' has no meaning at all in kung-fu.  So it is entirely
appropriate to construct the word `apt-fu'.
-- 
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Email:  Herbert Xu ~{PmV>HI~} <herbert@gondor.apana.org.au>
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