TGIF

TGIF is an acronym for the phrase "Thank God/Goodness It’s Friday".

History

Starting in the United States, it has become a common expression of relief at the end of the work week and anticipation of relaxing or partying over the weekend. The phrase was further popularised by the 1978 movie starring Donna Summer, "Thank God It’s Friday". The phrase has also become common for advertising and promotional materials. On college campuses beginning in the 1970s, the phrase (sometimes shortened to "TG") became associated with Friday afternoon beer parties, usually held outdoors.

Other uses

* The restaurant chain T.G.I. Friday’s
* Slogan of a Friday night sitcom programming block on the ABC-TV network. Some hosts would say, "Thank Goodness It’s Funny." see|TGIF (ABC)
* The QVC show on Fridays that celebrate the end of each week and kick off the weekend.
* The Florida resort website TGIF, for "Thank God It’s Florida"
* Cadbury’s "Crunchie" chocolate bar ran a commercial of which the slogan was "Thank Crunchie it’s Friday". The commercials were followed by more, most of them connecting Crunchie with Fridays.
* In the United Kingdom in the late 1990s, maverick television host Chris Evans produced a television program called "TFI Friday" for Channel 4. Officially it stood for "Thank Four It’s Friday" (in reference to the channel). "OFI Sunday", on ITV1, derives its name from the same source.
* Nickelodeon UK had a programming block called "Thank Nick it’s Friday."
* In the 1987 comedy film Dragnet, Tom Hanks’s character, Pep Streebeck says the line "Thank God, it’s Friday!" as both a play on the original phrase and as a reference to the arrival of his partner, Joe Friday (Dan Aykroyd). The phrase can be heard on the song "Dragnet" by the Art Of Noise which contains samples from the movie.
* Also seen at ski resorts as "Toes Go In First"
* Lonestar’s song, T.G.I.F.
*In the Flash series Homestar Runner, Strong Bad creates a video about hygiene. In the video, a character name Gene declares, "TGIG, y'all. Thank God I'm Gene!"
* "Thank God I’m a Forester" -- a tradition from the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies; essentially it’s a Friday afternoon happy hour for the students at the School, sometimes with themes. Since the establishment of the Yale organic farm, some TGIF events have moved there, where a brick oven was built to make organic pizza.
* [http://www.votetgif.com/ "The Green Initiative Fund"] -- A mandatory student fee referendum for environmental sustainability projects at the University of California, Berkeley that was voted on during the April 11-13, 2007 Associated Students of the University of California (ASUC) [http://election.asuc.org/ election] and passed with 69% of the vote. Students at over 20 American colleges and universities have passed [http://www.aashe.org/resources/student_fees.php similar referendums] , most of the referendums have created [http://www.aashe.org/resources/mandatory_energy_fees.php mandatory student fees for renewable energy and energy efficiency] .
* [http://tgifpittsburgh.googlepages.com/ "The Gathering of International Friends"] -- a Pittsburgh hospitality organization

Tactical Ground Intercept Facility

TGIF also was the acronym for a US Military Intelligence collection platform (Tactical Ground Intercept Facility). It was a two piece collection platform with digital audio receivers on a high altitude reconnaissance aircraft which used microwaves to redirect the intercepted audio back to linguists and ELINT specialists on the ground to provide near-real-time intelligence for theater commanders.

See also

* Tgif, an Xlib based interactive 2-D drawing tool under X11 for Unix
** .tgif, the file format used by the drawing tool