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GNU is a recursive acronym for "GNU's Not Unix!",chosen because GNU's design is Unix-like, but differs from Unix by being free software and containing no Unix code. A recursive acronym is an acronym that refers to itself. The term was first used in print in 1979 in Douglas Hofstadter's book Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, in which Hofstadter invents the acronym GOD, meaning "GOD Over Djinn", to help explain infinite series, and describes it as a recursive acronym.