yahoo

[Tom Zurinskas]

I'd call labelling a person a "yahoo" as a rarity having not heard it done in my big bunch of years.  Her ego-centric approach (which is what she calls having an opinion) is that it's used that way in her family so it's not rare.

The basic issues were.
1.  m-w.com's majority pronunciation is YAY-hoo (yay as in hay), but I'd think it is YAH-hoo or yah-HOO.
2.  m-w.com doesn't recognize yahoo as an interjection, which is obvious to me as the majority use, as yahoo.com would after the interjection not the noun (stupid person).
3.  m-w.com defines a "yahoo" as a "boorish (rude), crass (undignified), OR stupid person."  I maintain they must mean AND not OR as one could be smart and boorish and crass as well.  Otherwise a boorish person is a yahoo,  a crass person is a yahoo, and a stupid person is one two.

But I have no feeling for the term, having not encountered calling a person a yahoo.  She might be an expert in name calling, so it seems.

Tom Zurinskas, USA - CT20, TN3, NJ33, FL5+
See truespel.com - and the 4 truespel books plus "Occasional Poems" at authorhouse.com.




> Date: Wed, 2 Apr 2008 12:20:43 -0500
> From: slafaive at GMAIL.COM
> Subject: Re: yahoo
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender: American Dialect Society
> Poster: Scot LaFaive
> Subject: Re: yahoo
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>> So when I report my experience it's ego-centric, but when you report yours it's not?
>
> I think she was probably referring to this statement that you had
> made: "I've never heard anyone called a "yahoo". It's rare." It
> sounds as if you are calling this sense rare based on you not hearing
> it used that way much, while in reality that sense might not be rare
> at all to the majority, just rare to you.
>
> Scot
>
> On Wed, Apr 2, 2008 at 11:59 AM, Tom Zurinskas  wrote:
>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
>> Sender: American Dialect Society
>> Poster: Tom Zurinskas
>> Subject: Re: yahoo
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> So when I report my experience it's ego-centric, but when you report yours it's not? Who has the flawed thinking here? Watch out everyone, Amy West thinks that anyone who reports their own experience is being ego-centric - except her that is.
>>
>> Tom Zurinskas, USA - CT20, TN3, NJ33, FL5+
>> See truespel.com - and the 4 truespel books plus "Occasional Poems" at authorhouse.com.
>>
>>
>>
>>> Date: Wed, 2 Apr 2008 09:31:39 -0400
>>> From: medievalist at W-STS.COM
>>> Subject: Re: yahoo
>>> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>>>
>>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
>>> Sender: American Dialect Society
>>> Poster: Amy West
>>> Subject: Re: yahoo
>>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>
>>> The yay-hoo pron is from Swift's work: the two groups are named
>>> onomatopoetically (?). The Hwhynums (?) (too lazy to go down and look
>>> in Swift) are named based on the horse's whinny sound. The Yahoos are
>>> based on what sounds humans make (Yay! Hoo!).
>>>
>>> I call people "yahoos" all the time. So do others in my family.
>>> You're engaging in some very egocentric thinking, which is flawed.
>>>
>>>>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.
>>>
>>> ---Amy West
>>>
>>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>>
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