It is clear from context what people mean by Google-fu, but is this a humorous back-construction from some other kind of “fu”? Or what?
kung
ISTR that the original “kung-fu is strong” quote originates with Bruce Lee, but I can’t recall what exactly.
The idea of adding “fu” to random words might have been popularized by the film critic Joe Bob Briggs.
Yeah, his reviews would include the vital statistics of the movie. Something like…
“27 dead bodies, 1 rolling head, 3 quarts blood, 4 breasts; 3 car accidents (one with crash-and-burn), kung-fu, shovel-fu, chainsaw-fu. Drive-In Academy Award to Darla Dumplings, as the camp counsellor who gives swimming lessons with a difference (if you know what I mean, and I think you do)…”
The man was a genius.
There was a X-files episode (so we’re talking TV, not the real world) where one of the Men in Black claims that “my kung-fu is better than your kung-fu” in relation to his hacking skills. That might have something to do with it. Or maybe I’m crazy.
IIRC, fu as in kung-fu means skill. The kung part? I dunno, maybe spicy chicken, as in kung-pow 
. So English, in its usual habit of plundering other languages, now has us stapling -fu onto non-Chinese words, like a little boy with a big pack of Post-It® Notes. I haven’t had much practice at this new construction. My fu-fu is weak. :smack:
Does your resistance make you a fu-fighter?
The x-files would have been my guess, too.
One of the first whatever-fu references I remember from nerd/internet culture is “script-fu”, which was (is?) The Gimp’s scripting language, which seems to have first been referred to by that name in late 1998. Joe Bob Briggs’ usage definitely predates that, though.
<90s nerd> Wouldn’t that have been the Lone Gunmen, not the men in black? </90s nerd>
Joe Bob Briggs’s use of “fu” as a suffix definitely predates the TV show X-Files.
And of course ‘fu’ is unrelated to hackers’ use of the word ‘foo’.
All this time and not one *Fu Bird * joke? You guys are slipping.
I have always associated the use of ‘foo’ with the use of ‘foobar,’ a variation on fubar that is spelled like it sounds. FUBAR standing for Fucked Up Beyond All Repair.
That is similar to my association with the X-files use of kung-fu and Google-fu, it’s not research, just my association.
I suspect that sometimes words are repopularized, especially when they fit a new context.
Resistance is Fu-tile.
My humor-fu is weak. 
That’s where it comes from in the context of hacking/programming - ‘foo’ would be the first choice of name for an impromptu variable or procedure. If another was needed shortly afterwards, it would be ‘bar’.