GAFIATE/ˈɡæfɪeɪt/
To leave science-fiction fan activities.
Don’t bother to look this one up in your dictionary, as the chances are slim that you will find it, even though it probably dates back to the forties, or perhaps even the thirties. I was baffled by it when it turned up last week in David Langford’s Ansible Link e-mail newsletter: “As fans die or gafiate ...” (note to self: some day I really must do ansible, as well). Mr Langford tells me that it’s a well-known bit of SF fan slang, derived from the acronym GAFIA “Getting Away From It All” and that the acronym was originally used in the sense of finding SF fans’ organisations (fandom) but soon changed to its opposite. The verb almost inevitably followed. Another example of its use is in Fallen Angels by Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle and Michael Flynn: “ ‘We heard you’d gafiated.’ ‘Fafiated.’ She looked him straight in the eye, daring him to disagree. She hadn’t gotten away from it all; she’d been forced away from it all”.
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