Where does the “-fu” suffix come from?
—fu suffix indicating mastery or expertise ¹
We often use it in hacker slang, as in “How’s your elisp-fu?”
vivek on #emacs says “fu is the flow of energy” and aadis_fu (!!) says: “i think in chinese one of the meanings of fu is magic...”
BTW the site *Double-Tongue Word Wrester* is interesting:
Double-Tongued Word Wrester records words as they enter and leave the English language. It focuses upon slang, jargon, and other niche categories which include new, foreign, hybrid, archaic, obsolete, and rare words. Special attention is paid to the lending and borrowing of words between the various Englishes and other languages, even where a word is not a fully naturalized citizen in its new language. ²
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doesn’t elaborate, but confirms your other reference:
Jargon File 4.3.1
[common; generalized from `kung-fu’] Combining form denoting expert practice of a skill. “That’s going to take some serious code-fu.” First sighted in connection with the GIMP’s remote-scripting facility, script-fu, in 1998.
– GregScott 2004-10-27 15:03 UTC