nerf

perhaps an expressive coinage

Note: Sense 1 is alleged to have originated in the early years of the video game Ultima Online, released in September 1997, one of the earliest online role-playing games that could support thousands of participants. According to Raph Koster, the lead designer, "… the term 'nerfing' entered online gaming vocabulary because of U[ltima]O[nline]. At some point, we reduced the power of swords in melee combat, and players started complaining that they were hitting each other with nerf swords" (raphkoster.com/games/snippets/nerfing, accessed 10/12/2023). The "nerf swords" in question were play weapons with blades made of cell foam, first produced in 1988 by the toy and game manufacturer Parker Brothers. The Nerf brand, which by this time embraced a wide variety of toys, most notably foam dart blasters, began in 1969 with the Nerf Ball, marketed as "the world's first indoor ball." The origin of nerf in this sense is not certain, though it is almost certainly not an acronym from "non-expanding recreational foam" (a creative backronym). The ball's principal originator, the toy and game developer Reyn Guyer, did not coin the name, but explained it as follows: "It was after our line of foam products hit the market under the name NERF that we learned where the name came from. One of the people involved in promoting the line [at Parker Brothers] suggested naming it after the foam-padded roll bars on Jeeps, which off-roaders had dubbed 'NERF bars.' The name stuck" (reynguyer.com/nerf.html, accessed 10/12/2023). There are two problems with this explanation. First, roll bars were first installed in the CJ-5 Jeep in the 1969 model year, and not provided with foam padding until the early 1970's. More significantly, however, nerf bar was never a name for a roll bar. The nerf bar, earlier nerfing bar (with sense 2 of the verb, "to bump [another vehicle] in a race") is described in an early reference as "a special bumper contrivance both in the front and along the side of the [midget] racer near the rear wheels and around the tail piece. It is designed to keep rival car owners from crashing through the beautifully polished aluminum bodies, as well as to use as an offensive weapon if a slow car gets in the way" (Los Angeles Evening Citizen-News, June 17, 1941, p. 14). (More recently nerf bar refers to tubing mounted below the door of a pickup truck or SUV that is similar in function to a running board.) The nerf trail seems to end with the verb as defined in sense 2. The word is perhaps an expressive coinage; compare final [rf] in barf, scarf entry 3, snarf, Scots swarf "swoon," scurf.