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168

answers:

2

Why do so many gems end in fu?

Not that this make it clear to me, but here is what Google says "define: fu".

+4  A: 

It is, as @meagar said, a play on 'kung-fu'. It's an old, old practice. A few plugins for the GIMP are called *-fu, and you can hear people say that their vim-fu is strong, to say that someone is particularly skilled with vim.

Trevoke
I've often heard it used as google-fu, meaning one's skill at finding things with a search engine.
Jeanne Pindar
@jeanne that is indeed one more example :)
Trevoke
A: 

It comes from a trend in the English language consisting on attaching the particle -fu to an activity, normally to indicate that it there's a certain degree of skill involved. You can use these constructions the same way you would refer to martial arts (kung-fu):

"His math-fu is impressive"

"Can you solve this by doing some of your planning-fu?"

I believe the first rails gem that had this "lingüistic feature" was technoweenie's attachment-fu. It was a very useful gem, so it became widely popular. So it was imitated in other gems.

egarcia