yahoo (was: 'Top Words from 2007'...)

[Scot LaFaive]

Oy vey.

On Tue, Apr 1, 2008 at 10:51 AM, Tom Zurinskas <truespel at hotmail.com> wrote:
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Tom Zurinskas <truespel at HOTMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: yahoo (was: 'Top Words from 2007'...)
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Sorry about the strange characters in the phonetic spelling.  What the world needs is an English based phonetic spelling (truespel) that copies and pastes with no problem in email.
>
> We should all be familiar with the "yahoo.com" ads on TV.  It's pronounced YAH-hoo (~yaahue), or even yah-HOO (~yaahhue) in the TV ads, not YAY-hoo as m-w.com says (not that m-w.com isn't a great resource).  The ad pronunciation is perhaps a billion times more frequent in the ears of most folks than any other.
>
> I've never heard anyone called a "yahoo".  It's rare.  It's mostly a happy interjection!  Why would a website call themselves "yahoo" if the meaning usually stood for "crass boorish or stupid?.
>
> The logical "or" means the "yahoo person" can be boorish (surly rudeness), or crass (undignified), or stupid.  This is strange because one can boorish and crass without being stupid.
>
> Two lemmas for one word?  In most dictionries if a word has two uses or meanings they are given under one dictionary word (as m-w.com usually does).  It's nice to see that "yahoo" is recognized somewhere as an interjection (like yippee).
>
> Tom Zurinskas, USA - CT20, TN3, NJ33, FL5+
> See truespel.com - and the 4 truespel books plus "Occasional Poems" at authorhouse.com.
>
>
>
>
>
> > Date: Tue, 1 Apr 2008 10:29:59 -0400
> > From: halldj at BABEL.LING.UPENN.EDU
> > Subject: yahoo (was: 'Top Words from 2007'...)
> > To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> >
> > ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> > Sender: American Dialect Society
> > Poster: Damien Hall
>
> > Subject: yahoo (was: 'Top Words from 2007'...)
> > -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> > Tom said:
> >
> >> Main Entry: 1ya·hoo
> >> Pronunciation: \ˈyā-(ˌ)hü, ˈyä-\
> >> Function: noun
> >> Inflected Form(s): plural yahoos
> >> Date: 1726
> >> 1capitalized : a member of a race of brutes in Swift's Gulliver's Travels who
> >> have the form and all the vices of humans
> >> 2[influenced by 2yahoo] : a boorish, crass, or stupid person
> >> — ya·hoo·ism \-ˌi-zəm\ noun
> >
> > (BTW, the strange characters, if you see strange characters above, are what
> > appeared in my copy of this message, but I looked the word up in _MW Online_ to
> > see what the lemma actually said.)
> >
> > [snip]
> >
> >> Strange definition 2; because one could be boorish and crass while not being
> >> stupid. They probably mean "and" stupid.
> >
> > No, the _or_ is disjunctive, not conjunctive: 'someone who (the speaker
> > considers) is boorish, or crass, or stupid, or a combination of one or more of
> > these'.
> >
> >> I thought the word "yahoo" was just a happy exclamation of western roots like
> >> yippee. But that's not in the definition above.
> >
> > No, because it is given a separate lemma in both _MW_ and the _OED_ (to take
> > another example). In both dictionaries, the noun senses of _yahoo_ are
> > definition 1, and the interjection / exclamation sense is definition 2.
> >
> > Damien Hall
> > University of Pennsylvania
> >
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