FAQ

PluralFAQs, faqs

1. 1
   nouncountable

   A list of questions said to be frequently asked, together with answers to them.

   Before emailing support, she skimmed the FAQ and found her answer in seconds.

   Both airlines bury their refund policies deep in their FAQs.

   Note

   An initialism of frequently asked questions that now works as an ordinary countable noun: a site has an FAQ, a link goes to the FAQ page, and staff write FAQs to send to friends and family. The letters name only the questions, but the word names the whole document, questions and answers together. One site has one FAQ, and the plural counts several such documents.

2. 2
   nouncountable

   A document that explains how to play and win a particular video game; a strategy guide.

   She wrote a sixty-page FAQ covering every possible ending in the game.

   Players traded printed FAQs at school before video walkthroughs existed.

   Similarwalkthrough, guide

   Note

   Gamers borrowed the name of the question-and-answer list and largely dropped its format. A video-game FAQ holds instructions for playing and winning rather than a series of questions. The letters survive as a label for the genre, so a strategy guide can be called an FAQ even when it contains no question at all, and the word sits beside walkthrough and guide in gaming talk.

3. 3
   interjectionhumorous

   Fuck you; used humorously as a deliberately rude reply, with the initialism reinterpreted to stand for the insult.

   "FAQ," he replied when the mod told him to read the rules, then logged off.

   "Well, FAQ too, buddy," she fired back, laughing, after he gloated about the win.

   Note

   A separate word that only shares the spelling. It began when the livestreamer Sakura Miko said "fuck you" and was misheard as saying the letters F-A-Q, so it is not a playful re-expansion of the initialism. The joke depends on harmless-looking letters carrying a crude insult. It reads as mock rudeness among people who know the reference, but those people still hear the profanity.

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