Please excuse my ignorance...

I didn't realize it was not an exclusive term. I guess I'm waaaaay out of the loop. I still don't get the term meaning or why it has a meaning of altering photographs.

quote:

---

but what does the word "fark" mean?

---

Refers to image manipulation usually done for purpose of comedy or satire.

A man named Drew Curtis founded a news-posting website in the early 1990's. He was searching for a four-letter site name. Most 3 and 4 letter titles were taken. Rumor is that Curtis was drunk, thought he submitted a real word but misspelled it as "fark". He registered Fark.com nonetheless, but initially posted nothing on the site except for a pic of a squirrel with large testicles.

When he finally got it up and running, Curtis encouraged site visitors to submit interesting or bizarre news pieces as links. The concept being a bit like APNewsWire-meets-Drudge-meets-NationalEnquirer. Images quickly became part of the submitted fare. Perhaps, inspired by the original squirrel image, photomanipulated images came next. Fark.com remains active. It's now an eclectic mix of news, factoids, interesting photos, and what we'd all recognize as "farks" (funny photoshopped images).

Like coke, kleenex, xerox, etc., over time the term "fark" became a synecdoche.