I don't think these things are universal across software, but you can often put -f on its own, separate from other flags, or get in the habit of using the long --force flag.
Yep! I noticed something like this in an early-20th-century book I've been reading: the "hello" word we take for granted was spelled "halloa." I've been meaning to look more into the history of that one.
I really have no idea, but "blogger in the 80s" is kind of hilarious. The coining of a term can be hard to pin down, but it also matters a lot less than when it takes off. Looking at this ngram I think we can place the rise, when most people would become aware of it, in the early 2010s.
When I first saw sudo I assumed it was pronounced "pseudo" because it lets you fake like you're doing stuff as another user. So that has stuck for me. (And despite all evidence, I still low-key believe it's a clever pun encompassing both that and the official "superuser do.")
The post was about being asked to disable background blurring specifically.