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What's the real meaning of "Fur-ever" here?

It's equal to "forever" or "fur" + "ever" => "Furever" which looks a little weird. I've looked the word up in the dictionary and Google search, but couldn't find a proper definition.

We were all happy cats until 1999. Browser wars between Netscape and Microsoft, the need for standards, and Britney Spears - '...Baby One More Time' changed the world as we know it. Fur-ever.

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    It's intended as word play meaning "forever," but in reference to furry animals.
    – Apollyon
    Commented Oct 10, 2022 at 9:28
  • Can you provide some reference links?
    – xgqfrms
    Commented Oct 10, 2022 at 9:33
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    You could search for "furever friend" (with double quotation marks) on Google. The results are about animals.
    – Apollyon
    Commented Oct 10, 2022 at 9:34
  • I seem to suddenly understand that Fur-ever means that some small animals like dogs and cats are the eternal friends of human beings. fureverfriend.info facebook.com/FUReverFriendDoodles amazon.com/Search-Your-Best-Furever-Friend/dp/173234471X
    – xgqfrms
    Commented Oct 10, 2022 at 9:38
  • @Apollyon Agreed, and possibly a reference to "happy cats" in the first line of the quote.
    – Peter Jennings
    Commented Oct 22, 2022 at 14:10

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"Furever" is not a real word, but native English speakers would recognise it as a pun - a portmanteau of the words fur (which is synonymous with animals) and forever.

Don't assume that, just because you found another reference that uses the word 'furever', there is a correlation between the two or that one is a reference to the other. These kind of puns are very common and the basis of a lot of jokes. For example, there's a joke among dog-owning couples, particularly those that choose to have pets rather than children, to refer to themselves as 'pawrents' (a portmanteau of 'paw' and 'parents').

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The original term with regard to dogs and cats and bunnies and birds (usual pets) is:

to find them a forever home. That's the lingo from shelters and animal lovers.

So, they took that idea and made it a pun: fur-ever.

Like this: FOREVER HOME RESCUE NEW ENGLAND

forever home

It's important to mention this since English does that a lot. People take existing tropes or clichés and use them to create something new.

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  • I don't think there's any connection to "forever home" here. The pun is simply between cats having fur, and the phrase "changed the world forever". The last sentence on the page is "And now you know the hiss-tory", making a pun on "history", because cats "hiss". It's just trying to be cute.
    – IMSoP
    Commented Oct 10, 2022 at 16:53
  • @IMSoP I truly doubt that the writer was not thinking about forever home when he or she came up with fur-ever. The trope is very widespread. Too bad we can't ask them.
    – Lambie
    Commented Oct 10, 2022 at 17:20
  • I'm certainly aware of the phrase "forever home", but I just can't see any connection to this sentence.
    – IMSoP
    Commented Oct 10, 2022 at 20:06
  • @IMSoP And I can't imagine it without that.
    – Lambie
    Commented Oct 10, 2022 at 20:08
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"Fur-ever" isn't a real word, it's a deliberate misspelling of "forever" which includes the word "fur". There are a couple of clues to this:

  • The hyphen is there to make the word "fur" more obvious, and avoid it looking like an accidental spelling error
  • The first sentence is "we were happy cats" - fur is something associated with cats, so the pun is "on-topic" for whatever fictional point of view this is written from

Another thing which might be confusing for non-native speakers is that "fur-ever" (or "forever") is written as though it was a complete sentence, even though it's not. This is just for emphasis, so the actual phrase is "changed the world forever".

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"Fur-ever" means that some small animals with "fur" like Dogs and Cats are the "forever" friends of human beings according to the context of that comic.

roles: Certificat, Browserbird, Compugter

Follow the adventures of Certificat, Browserbird, and Compugter as they explain why HTTPS is crucial for the future of the web and how it all works together.

refs

https://howhttps.works/

links

https://fureverfriend.info

http://www.fureverhomerescue.com/

https://fur-everpaws.com/

https://homefurever.com/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecZTkiEYP1o&ab_channel=NickelodeonCartoonUniverse

https://facebook.com/FUReverFriendDoodles

https://amazon.com/Search-Your-Best-Furever-Friend/dp/173234471X

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  • Consider adding this line, "This answer is opinion-based. Fur-ever may be presumed to mean that some small animals with fur like Dogs and Cats are the forever friends of human beings.". Also consider pruning the list of sites to a list of sites where the meaning of the words "Fur-ever" is explained in the same manner to that of a dictionary or thesaurus explaining the meaning of a word.
    – banuyayi
    Commented Oct 10, 2022 at 12:36
  • I don't think there's any connection to "forever friends" here. The pun is simply between cats having fur, and the phrase "changed the world forever". The last sentence on the page is "And now you know the hiss-tory", making a pun on "history", because cats "hiss". It's just trying to be cute.
    – IMSoP
    Commented Oct 10, 2022 at 16:53
  • @banuyayi The trope re cats and dogs is forever home.
    – Lambie
    Commented Oct 10, 2022 at 17:22

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