snafu

Other forms of snafu

plural

snafus·

past tense

snafued·

present participle

snafuing·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about snafu

What does snafu mean?

snafu means "an acronym often used by soldiers in World War II: situation normal all fucked up". That is the primary sense; the word has 3 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in snafu?

snafu has 2 syllables: snaf-u. The stress falls on "snaf". In IPA it is /ˈsnæfu/.

What is another word for snafu?

Close synonyms include fucked-up. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is snafu a common word?

snafu is banded "Uncommon" — turns up in careful writing rather than conversation. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.