Antedating of Yeah

[Baker, John]

        As Jon has noted, dictionaries consider "yeah" a 20th-century
word (Merriam-Webster gives a date of 1902), though it seems likely to
be much older.  I suspect that the key is to look for spellings other
than "yeah."  Even with just that spelling, though, colloquial "yeah"
can be antedated.  Most strikingly, it appears passim in the modern
sense in Edwin Lassetter Bynner, Zachary Phips (1892) (Google Books full
text).  The first use is on page 9:  "Yeah, I was."  The speakers who
say "yeah" tend to be schoolboys and sailors from the Boston area,
though that may not be true of every use.  It may or may not be
significant that the book is a historical novel.

        Bynner also used "yeah," but apparently only once and in
dialect, in an earlier novel, Agnes Surriage (1886) (Google Books full
text), which has a Massachusetts boy, asked if he can tell the way to an
inn, say:  "Yeah, can oi; g' down ther' by Skipper-r Pennel's, 'n' go
off on th' lorboard tack till ye come to Moll Pitcher's; 'n' ther' ye'll
see 't stret to leeward."

        Of perhaps greater significance is this passage from an essay by
Richard Jefferies (1848 - 1887), "Field Words and Ways," published
posthumously in Richard Jefferies, Field and Hedgerow (1889) (Google
Books full text), but probably reprinted from some earlier magazine
publication.  The essay discusses the language of English farmers and
laborers; unfortunately, it is mostly unclear what part of England is
intended, though it seems likely that Jefferies drew from his
experiences living in Wiltshire or perhaps Surrey:

<<Most difficult of all to express is the way they say yes and no.  It
is neither yes nor no, nor yea nor nay, but a cross between it somehow.
To say yes they shut their lips and then open them as if gasping for
breath and emit a sort of 'yath' without the 'th,' more like 'yeah,' and
better still if to get the closing of the lips you say 'em' first -
'em-yeah.'  The no is 'nah' with a sort of jerk on the h; 'na-h.'  This
yeah and nah is most irritating to fresh ears; you do not seem to know
if your servant has taken any notice of what you said, or is making a
mouth at you in derision.>>


John Baker

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