Word.ws English Dictionary

fubar

/ˈfuːbɑːɹ/

fubar is the alternative form of FUBAR.

fubar is the alternative form of foobar.

Meaning of foobar

Noun

foobar (plural foobars)

  1. (slang) A serious mistake.
  2. A metasyntactic variable name, a place holder for words; compare foo, bar.

Adjective capitalized: FUBAR

FUBAR

  1. (abbreviation, acronym, slang) Acronym of fucked/fouled up beyond all recognition/repair/reason/recovery.

Forms of fubar

Noun
pluralfubars
Adjective
alternative formfubar

Origin of fubar

Originated as slang in the U.S. Army in World War II, presumably from earlier foo, possibly influenced by German furchtbar (“terrible”). It is unclear if FUBAR or foobar was the original form.

Words formed from fubar

Questions about fubar

What is fubar the alternative form of?
Fubar is the alternative form of FUBAR.
What part of speech is fubar?
Fubar is an adjective.
How do you pronounce fubar?
Fubar is pronounced /ˈfuːbɑːɹ/ (US).

Words near fubar in the dictionary

  1. fuar
  2. fuark
  3. fuars
  4. fub
  5. fub off
  6. fubar
  7. FUBARed
  8. fubarite
  9. fubars
  10. fubbed
  11. fubbed off

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: fubar (page history and authors); FUBAR (page history and authors); foobar (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-JutishMale-FUBAR.wav, En-au-FUBAR.ogg.

Cite this entry: “fubar.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/fubar. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.