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What's a froup?
Posted to %afda by pieceoftheuniverse on 29th November 2000
Trine Mortensen wrote:
>
> What with me being VERY new here and everything, someone please tell me:
> what's a froup???
A froup is ... well, it's a bit difficult to explain. So imagine this:
Imagine you're driving along, minding your own business -- this assumes that you have a car, or can, in fact, drive someone else's car if the opportunity arises -- when you begin crossing a bridge over a somewhat large body of water. At that precise moment you turn on the radio and are instantly assaulted by the worst music you have ever heard, but all attempts to flip it off again are met with failure.
As if that wasn't enough, there's a tollbooth up ahead and they'll only take correct change. So now you're digging into every nook and cranny searching for that extra quarter you know is -somewhere- in here while speeding along at ninety-plus kilometers per hour, the music's blaring, and you're surround on all sides by, collectively, asphalt, water, and air.
Then you hear a *thump*thump*thump* coming from the rear of your car; a quick look in the rearview shows, to your relief, that you don't have a flat, but then the trunk springs open and seven wild elephants who had been trying to escape for the last couple of hours make their way onto the expressway, severely clogging up traffic behind you -- not that there would be much difference, since you have yet to find that crucial twenty-five pence to make it past the toll booth, so they would have been stuck anyway. Of course, the other drivers don't know that, so they start honking and cursing at you, and the music is still going at top volume.
Against all odds, an earthquake hits, severely disrupting your searching efforts, not to mention putting you in a somewhat precarious situation, what with the bridge tipping and swaying every which way. Through this, however, the coin you had been risking your neck over hits you upside the head, and it is but a simple matter to grab onto it and make your way through the tollbooth with hardly a care. Another swift glance in the rearview shows that you made it off the bridge just in time to see it topple into the body of water, taking everyone who had been honking at you quite mercilessly with it. A final rumble of the earth helps your trunk slam shut, and you are allowed to go on your merry way.
This has nothing to do with what a froup is.
But that feeling of justice, and of pity, of sadness and of joy, of anger and remorse -- that is what a froup is.
A froup is also where you can make up stuff just like the above to people you don't even know, and be assured that at least half will take you seriously.
--
pieceoftheuniverse - in other words, it's a bit like a pub.
Posted to %afda by pieceoftheuniverse on 30th November 2000
Till Westermayer wrote:
>
> What happend to the elephants?
The elephants had a narrow escape. Right after they surprised themselves quite efficiently after landing on what was definitely not their home territory -- in fact, it is quite difficult to get farther from their home territory than an undefined bridge over an indiscernible somewhat largish body of water that could very well be, for all they know, on a different planet altogether -- the elephants attempted to dash back in the trunk, perhaps in the hopes that since it had gotten them into this predicament, opening it again with them inside might get them back again.
Failing to actually so much as approach the speed the trunk (and of course the car) was traveling, however, they also failed to watch out for the vehicles behind them. This was somewhat understandable, seeing as how they had never been on an expressway before and didn't know the proper rules of etiquette, unlike the city elephants who were, no doubt, only a few miles away in the local zoo. Put one of -those- elephants behind the wheel of, say, a Yugo, and you will never see a more courteous driver.
But that's not the point. The point is about the elephants attempting, and failing rather badly, at catching the trunk that had deposited them so dispassionately into a moderately busy expressway. After the initial confusion had passed, they organized a bit and decided to go towards the side of the road and hitchhike.
Lady Luck was by no means going to be seen with a herd of elephants, however, much less those who fall out of cars, and so it should be no surprise that they were picked up -- metaphorically, you must understand -- by the local constabulary. Since they had no papers revealing citizenship, they are scheduled for deportation on the next available flight. All the best for them, really; currently they are regarded, if somewhat on the unofficial level, as "mascots" of the highway patrol, and all officers will be sorry to see them go (even the arresting officer, though he would never admit it).
If you hurry, you might be able to pop round and see them, but as I don't know exactly where this occurred it might be a trifle difficult to locate them. I'm sure it's in the paper somewhere.
--
pieceoftheuniverse - and thank you, Till, for proving my point.
Posted to %afda by Caleb Huitt on 1st December 2000
Trine Mortensen wrote:
>
> What with me being VERY new here and everything, someone please tell me:
> what's a froup???
Ah! I'm so glad you asked. The term froup, I'm afraid, wasn't an original invention of this particular froup. In fact, the original froup is probably lost in the myths of time and Usenet. However, there are signs that it was, originally, an acronym. Thus, it should be capitalized, but it isn't. This is, frankly, because we are too lazy to hit caps all the time. But, for your sake, I'll do it once: FROUP. There, see? Doesn't that resemble an acronym now?
Now, as to what it stands for, that used to be another mystery. Due to clues recently discovered in alt.games.mecha (or so I've heard through the grapevine), we are able to make a hypothesis for the original words that came to combine into the acronym "froup". These words are, so nearly as we can determine, "Friends Routinely Opposed ___ U___ P___". Or rather, that's what had been determined previously to the recent clues. The most recent clues managed to allow us to fill in the last word with "osts". So, now we have Friends Routinely Opposed ___ U___ Posts. By using our deductive logic (that is, good guesses), we fill in one more word: to. This word isn't very important, and hence either wasn't in the original acronym, or was dropped because "froup" is easier to pronounce than "frotup". So, now we have Friends Routinely Opposed to U___ Posts.
There has been much debate about what the U-word might be. Many theories have been cast forth, including "Untimely", "Ultimate", "Ugly", and even "Uranus". None of these seems to fit well, however, with what the word now means, and so most of the researchers reject these alternatives. The reasoning is that with the short amount of time the word has been in our vocabulary, it hasn't had time to make such a drastic jump in meaning. Although some cases have been pointed out before where this has happened, it is far from the norm.
I myself have helped to propose - and this is even gaining some widespread acceptance - that the missing U-word is actually "Useful". This word has two benefits: 1) it starts with U, and 2) it makes the original acronym very similair to the meaning the word "froup" has today.
In fact, I've just received a call asking me to write an article on this hypothesis, to be published in an upcoming issue of Acronyms Monthly. I think I'll just take this post and flesh it out a bit more, and that should do nicely. Hopefully before too long, we will have settled this issue more or less permanantely, and therefore allow all of us researchers to move on to newer projects. (I, myself, certainly hope so, as this has caused a bit of a rift amongst us researchers recently.) Anyway, look for the article to be published soon in an AM.
And, just to sum up one more time, "froup" is a word that used to be an acronym, that stood for "Friends Routinely Opposed to Useful Posts", and the word "froup" more or less means the same now. Of course, I may have violated the idea behind the word in posting this explanatiain for you, but I thought that the record really should be set straight.
--
Caleb - whose first suggestion, "Ungoliant", was rejected very quickly out of hand.
