Re: APT-Fu 0.2.3
Herbert Xu <herbert@gondor.apana.org.au> wrote:
> 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'.
Very cool explanation. I've always used 'kung-fu' and 'kung'
(pronounced 'gung' in Cantonese) to refer to both the time consumed to
do work and various martial art forms; yet I never realized that I've
never used or heard the word 'fu' used alone. With that, apt-fu did
take a lot of kung-fu to produce :)
--
Eric Wong normalperson@yhbt.net
Petta Technology, Inc eric@petta-tech.com
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