This is from another message board and was accompanied with the following message:
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OK, first I’d like to say I honestly don’t get this. If it’s something offensive, I’m not aware (I’ve been thinking about this for 8 years now).
My wife was given a button around 15 years ago by a friend in high school. This guy commited suicide some years back. When he gave her this button, he wouldn’t tell her what it meant. He said she would figure it out.
Well, here I finally got a working scanner and I can’t take it anymore. This thing has been stuck to our wall for years and this is me -> for the past 8 years.{/quote]
Any ideas? Its been driving us nuts over there all day.
Well, I fed it through an anagram generator and got some amusing results, including the repulsive “Dinghy of pus” and the sound advice “Pudgy if nosh”.
FISH POND GUY
GO FIND PUSHY
PUNY DOGFISH
FUDGY SIPHON
FOUND SHY PIG
I SPY FUND HOG
DYING OF PUSH
FISHY PUN GOD
DUG SHINY FOP
HOUND FIG SPY
PHD INFO GUYS
…but I’m guessing Chefguy has the right idea, and it’s an abbreviation of something.
The form of the G is quite different to the other letters, which makes me wonder if it isn’t something to do with the way you view the badge? Upside down it could be an ornate H for example…
In bastardised scandinavian it could be “harbour UPFand your”.
We’ve run thru a gammit of various languages (and encryptions) and all of those are turning up with jibberish.
The G caught our attention as well. It looks to be a G and a J combined looking at the rest of the font used oe even a combination of a J and a C to form the G, which could give rise to a Christian message, Jesus Christ and God.
I’m not sure the acronym thing is on the right track. The source says “You’ll figure it out”, but an acronym with that many letters is un-figurable. There’s just too many possibilities. On the other hand, I don’t know what else it might be.
I don’t have anything to contribute that hasn’t been touched on, but does the poster’s wife remember anything about the circumstances in which she recieved the pin? Anything she could tell us about the dude who gave it to her? Anything in particular about their relationship? I don’t think we’re going to figure this out without some sense of context. If you could point us to the original thread, that might also be helpful.
I can’t make much of it. What if the first three letters should be pronounced like “HIS” and the last three like “D(Y)IN”. That leaves UFPOG… The whole thing together almost makes me think of Old English.
The button is probably one of a kind, made with one of those button-making kits that are relatively easy to find. The lettering appears to have been created on a dot-matrix printer. So…
Could the sets of three letters be two people’s initials? And the five letters in the middle line may then be an acronym that would have meaning to those two people? Since the guy told her that she would figure it out, we kind of have to assume that he thought she would recognize the significance. On the other hand, if he was suicidal, he may not have been rational when he made the button and when he gave it to her. So it would have made sense to him at the time, but opaque to anybody else.
In any case, I think the interpretation depends on having known the guy. The letters alone are out of context and void of meaning.
Putting these two thoughts together, I wonder if it represents 3 inspirational phrase. The first and third would be what Starving mentioned, the second would be U___ F___ P___ O___ God/Jesus.
Guys, I can say with some authority that the G/J theory is a dead end.
The “tail” that makes the “G” look like a “J” is called a swash in typography circles. Having been something of a graphic designer in the 70’s & 80’s, I can attest that letterforms with swashes were all the rage at the time the button was made. That version of “G” was just one available optional “G” letterform for the typeface in question (Cooper Black, incidentally). See the masthead of “New York” Magazine for a well-known example of swash use from the era.
for the past 8 years.{/quote]