yahoo means A rough, coarse, loud or uncouth individual. It carries an Arena rating of 1343, earned across 3 head-to-head judged battles.
Among words judged in Lexicurio's Arena, yahoo ranks #2,350 of 14,448 for Most Incisive Words, #2,374 of 14,451 for Most Whimsical Words, #2,382 of 14,297 for Words That Escaped Their Books, #2,574 of 14,448 for Funniest Words.
yahoo is pronounced /ˈjɑːhuː/.
Why “yahoo” is a great word
A crude, loud, or brutish person; also, an exclamation of joy or a battle cry. From the name of a race of brutish humanoids in Jonathan Swift's 1726 work *Gulliver's Travels*. Unlike a "boor," which implies rustic clumsiness and ill manners, or a "lout," which suggests aggressive, awkward stupidity, a yahoo carries the sting of innate, animalistic savagery—a deliberate regression beneath the skin of civilization. It is the heedless shove in a crowded street, the triumphant, wordless shout from a moving car, the sudden, feral whoop that escapes when joy or violence sheds all decorum—the voice of man as beast, unashamed and unredeemed.
Etymology
From Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift, where Yahoo is the name of a race of brutes.
noun
- A rough, coarse, loud or uncouth individual.
- A humanoid cryptid said to exist in parts of eastern Australia, and also reported in the Bahamas.“1835, James Holman, Travels, quoted by Malcolm Smith, Bunyips and Bigfoots (Millennium Books, 1996, →ISBN), who notes that the Australian sense almost certainly derives from Gulliver's Travels, despite Holman's report
The natives are greatly terrrified by the sight of a person in a mask calling him "devil" or Yah-hoo, which signifies evil spirit.”
- One of a race of brutes, who look and act similar to men, inhabiting the same land as the civilized Houyhnhnms.“I therefore often begged his Favour to let me go among the Herds of Yahoos in the Neighbourhood, to which he always very graciouſly conſented, being perfectly convinced, that the Hatred I bore thoſe Brutes, would never ſuffer me to be corrupted by them; […]”
- An employee of the Internet company Yahoo!“But having two beaming Chief Yahoos on the cover is an implied seal of approval.”
intj
- Exclamation of joy or enjoyment.“"Yahoooooo! Give her some stick!"”
- Battle cry.
verb
- To give a cry of yahoo.
- To search using the Yahoo! search engine.“I watched as she Googled, Yahooed, Asked, and used a couple of search engines I’d never heard of.”
Words closest in meaning
By meaning, not spelling — each word's AI semantic fingerprint, nearest first.
- houyhnhnm 86% match — One of a fictional race of exceptionally civilized creatures, who look exactly like horses, inhabiting the same land as the brutish Yahoos. vs yahoo →
- struldbrug 81% match — Someone or something that is immortal or extremely ancient, but which may have persisted past the point where it should be dead. vs yahoo →
- lilliputianism 78% match — The quality or tendency of being very small. vs yahoo →
- brobdingnagian 78% match — Of or pertaining to Brobdingnag. vs yahoo →
- laputan 78% match — Fanciful; preposterous; absurd in philosophy or science. vs yahoo →
- hubbub 77% match — A confused sound of a crowd of people shouting or speaking simultaneously; an uproar. vs yahoo →
- lilliput 77% match — Any of various small freshwater mussels of the genus Toxolasma, found mainly in the southeastern United States. vs yahoo →
- guffaw 77% match — A boisterous laugh. vs yahoo →