What makes someone a fob

In fact, given a dozen years most do as well or better than ABAs financially, if not socially. They can be excused, then, for harboring some less-than-flattering assessments of ABAs. By the same token, in their struggle to acculturate, FOBs often come to appreciate the trails blazed by the ABS, or at least, by their ancestors. Let's hear the good as well as the bad.

This interactive article is closed to new input. Discussions posted during the past year remain available for browsing. It's the kind of place where groups of friends in school would joke about their "token white friend. I can't remember the first time I heard the term FOB, but it's one that gets thrown around casually and with relative regularity among people with immigrant parents or who've emigrated themselves. But the term — at least from what I observed and the experiences of my Asian friends — was never used as a slur by non-Asians toward Asians.

Rather, it was a term used within the Asian community, and used most often in a joking manner, or to describe your parents and the funny occurrences that happen when things get lost in translation with them. And as the kid of parents whose English isn't always on point don't kill me, Anne and Baba! My friends and I will exchange screenshots of these kinds of texts, and we love the My Mom Is a Fob Tumblr, which asks: "My mom is a cute fob. Is yours too? It feels more endearing than anything else.

I'm proud that my parents are from another country, and in awe that they picked up their lives and started a new one, with a new language and customs and way of life, all the way around the world. And with my friends — who are all also the children of immigrants, mostly Asian — FOB and "fobby" are descriptors to use about your own culture.

It can be used as an insult, too, sure. But I've only ever heard it used by Asian people to describe themselves or another Asian person — maybe someone who actually did emigrate recently to the States, and mostly as a lighthearted and self-deprecating term. But if I did hear it used by someone who couldn't claim the term or have a connection to it, it'd be another story.

Being "fresh off the boat" means something: Your parents or you moved around the world, to a country where they knew no one, learned a new language, adapted to a new culture, and made a life for themselves. As far as I've experienced it, it's been an insider-y term, one more of camaraderie than "othering" someone.

Hey, maybe I wasn't allowed to have sleepovers and I had to go to Turkish school every Sunday, but it wasn't so bad if my other friends got to complain about going to Chinese school with me too. Our parents were "fobby" and cared about us and wanted to instill their culture in us. This is actually really interesting because I hadn't heard this term until I got to college. I go to Northwestern and it lacks diversity in certain capacities, at least compared with my high school.

I had only heard the phrase from the mouths of some Korean friends of mine and it did seem immediately jarring. Like there's nothing inherently within it that makes it bad but it has this sort of negative connotation to me even though I hadn't heard it before. I identify as an American, I guess, because I was born here, but my family is South African so I've been raised on that history and especially what it meant to be Jewish there as well.

In terms of the phrase having a negative connotation, I guess that's more of a visceral thing. Save This Word! See synonyms for fob on Thesaurus. Compare watch pocket. We could talk until we're blue in the face about this quiz on words for the color "blue," but we think you should take the quiz and find out if you're a whiz at these colorful terms. Origin of fob 1 —55; origin uncertain; compare German dialect Fuppe pocket.

Words nearby fob foamflower , foam glass , foam rubber , foamy , foamy virus , fob , fob off , FoC , focaccia , focal , focal amyloidosis. Verb Phrases. Origin of fob 2 —; Middle English fobben; cognate with German foppen to delude; cf. Words related to fob buck , cap , dandy , dude , fool , hinge , popinjay , exquisite. How to use fob in a sentence The plastic charging case checks in at roughly the same size as a car key fob. Hackers said they could steal a Tesla Model X in minutes.