The etymology of the term is uncertain. It may derive from "newie", which is attested in U.S. and Australian sources of the 1850s, meaning a neophyte in a place or situation; alternatively, it may derive from the British
public school slang "new boy" or "new blood", which is attributed to the same era and was applied to a schoolboy in his first term. In the 1960s and 1970s, the term "newbie" had a limited usage among U.S. troops in the
Vietnam War as a slang term for a new man in a unit. Another use of the term newbie was the moniker given to new U.S. Navy recruit students attending Basic Electricity and Electronics school by more senior students, a requisite course prior to enrollment in the A-school course at Naval Air Technical Training Center,
Millington, Tennessee. The earliest appearance of the term on
the Internet may have been on the
Usenet newsgroup talk.bizarre. By 1988, it had already entered online usage. Coming from an oral tradition, the term has various spellings. Among alternative forms are "newby", "nubie", and "newbee" (e.g.
Los Angeles Times of August 1985: "It had to do with newbees. I could be wrong on the spelling, but newbies are the rookies among the
Blue Angels."). ==Connotations of variants==