GNU

An initialism used in tribute to the memory of someone who has died, in lieu of “RIP” or “z"l.” It comes from Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novel Going Postal (2004). In the book, operators of “the clacks,” a semaphore system, transmit this code with the name of fallen comrades:

G: General broadcast, send in all directions.
N: Do not log the message.
U: Send the message back when it reaches the end of the line.

This direction keeps the deceased’s name cycling around the system forever. In fans’ use, it means to always remember someone: As the novel’s prologue puts it, "A man is not dead while his name is still spoken." (It was also a nod to techie humor: GNU is a free operating system; its name stands for “GNU’s not Unix.”)

The term came into popular fannish parlance with PTerry’s death in 2015, when Pratchett admirers created XClacksOverhead, a code that sets a header reading “GNU Terry Pratchett” into websites.

---

Fanspeak

2015—

This is a fanspeak page. Please extend it by adding information about when and by whom it was coined, whether it’s still in use, etc.