Kirsten in Evanston, Illinois, reports that when she and her husband lived in a co-op at the University of Michigan, they and their friends used the acronym GUFF for “general use free food,” which anyone was free to eat. The word GUFF proved so handy that they still use it today, and the word has extended to mean items that are fair game for anyone, be it food or beer or other things such as detergent. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “GUFF: General Use Free Food”
One of our conversations prompted this remembrance from Kirsten Everspah, who lives in Evanston, Illinois. She and her husband lived in a co-op in college at the University of Michigan, and it was common in co-ops across campus to have food and other things that were just there for common use.
Anybody could take them. And the acronym that they used on campus was GUF, which stood for general use free food, but it also stood for detergent and just anything else that you had that anybody could take.
And she said that they were recently together with a group of friends from college and they still use that term because it’s so nice to have a term for anything that’s fair game for everyone.
GUF. General use free food. GUF. Oh, yeah. I don’t imagine there’d be a lot of collision with the other meaning of guff, that’s pretty handy.
Yeah, I like it. Well, you can call us and you can give us either kind of guff on the phone, 877-929-9673.
