WTF

phrase, noun — 4 senses

WTF

phrase

Etymology (programming slang): Originated on The Daily WTF, a humorous blog dealing with real-world examples of bad programming.

1

Government, Military, Politics, War Internet, Abbreviation, Initialism, Slang, Vulgar Initialism of what the fuck.

  • I've READ them; I know what all the words are. I still say, "WTF, over?" Someone's playing with our heads on this one, but what's all the word stew?1985, Dick Dunn, “China Cat lyrics - explanations?”, in net.music.gdead (Usenet):
  • Now, please, explain WTF did you mean by this text?1994, Marat Fayzullin, “Re: MMM”, in relcom.talk (Usenet):
3 more examples
  • WTF are you on about? We played some very good football for most of the match, […]2005, “defect violation”, “Re: WTF!!”, in uk.sport.football.clubs.liverpool (Usenet):
  • WTF was that about?2019, 20 November, Carol Midgley, "Prince Andrew is ‘not very quick on his feet’, says the Duchess of York. What of her?" (in The Times newspaper)
  • There’s a similar “sure but what else?” vibe to Made for Love, HBO Max’s new high-concept half-hour comedy, gently coasting on its WTF setup for longer than it should, to the detriment of the main star Cristin Milioti, trying her very best to secure our attention as it slowly drifts elsewhere.2021 March 31, Benjamin Lee, “Made for Love review – Black Mirror-esque comedy needs an upgrade”, in The Guardian:
2

Rare, Vulgar Where the fuck, why the fuck, when the fuck, or who the fuck.

Derived terms
WTAF, WTFDYM, WTFery, WTFO, WTFPL, WTFromantic, WTF Star
Related terms
DTF, TF, whiskey tango foxtrot, WTFU

WTF

noun

Etymology (programming slang): Originated on The Daily WTF, a humorous blog dealing with real-world examples of bad programming.

1

Abbreviation, Initialism Initialism of White's tree frog.

2

Computing, Engineering, Mathematics, Natural sciences, Physical sciences, Programming, Sciences Slang A bafflingly bad or unwise design decision.

  • I think coercing numbers to booleans is a WTF - 0 should not be evaluatable as a boolean, it should be a type mismatch.https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1995113/strangest-language-feature/3161298
  • React attempts to wrap the browser DOM API and it's conventions in a way that's (for people who use it) easier to reason about, that's kind of like saying Anvil is a WTF because it wraps Vulcanhttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22888986

Entry derived from the Wiktionary, under licence CC BY-SA 4.0 — list of authors.