Antedating "the yips" OED 1963-->1943 :: Fwd: "yips" - Word of the Day from the OED

[Victor Steinbok]

  OED WOTD had "the yips" last night. The text is the same on-line, of
course. (See below.)

I can't verify the GB hit for 1953--nor do I know anything about golf
beyond the basics (so, not much about history). If anyone can confirm
the accuracy of the publication /and/ follow that up with checking the
text, someone is going to appreciate it. (I'm just reporting what I found.)

http://bit.ly/9YHwcV
Sam Snead. Natural Golf. 1953
p. 103 [quoted from preview--snippet does not show the text.]
> Bobby Jones once asked Tommy Armour, the former US Open Champion, what
> "the yips" were and Tommy replied, "Never mind, ... I had "the yips."
> Up until that time I had been a wrist putter, and I had putted with my
> weight evenly balanced ...

Sneed also had 1962 The Education of a Golfer and "the yips" made an
appearance there as well.

Another 1953 hit:

http://bit.ly/aKx0Jh
Tommy Armour. How to play your best golf all the time. 1953
p. 138
> The terrifying thought of playing with consummate skill to within a
> few feet of the hole, then having all previous achievement nullified
> by what happens within a few inches is enough to give the best golfers
> the yips.

   Tommy Armour makes an earlier appearance as a possible progenitor of
the expression. Again, the volume information has not been fully
verified, and certainly not on paper.

http://bit.ly/96LwrS
The Nation's Business. Vol. 35. 1947
[p. 52 in GB--actual location unknown]
> He had assured himself that this was all he wanted to do, that all he
> desired was a comfortable game. Then he set out to break 90. If he
> accomplished that, he moved on relentlessly to break 80. It is at this
> stage that something is likely to go whoosh and his score jump back up
> to 110. It is a personal catastrophe. As Tommy Armour used to express
> it: "The 'yips' have got him."

Note, in particular, that, in this context, there is no explicit
connection to the putting game as it appears in the OED.

Also note that the OED gives "unknown" as the etymology. I suppose, one
would have to ask Armour for clarity. But, given that in other contexts
"the yips" represent not only sounds of dogs, but also provide
counterbalance to yells, yelps, yaws, yaps, and yahoos, might not the
origin lie with the corresponding sound represented by the same word?
Admittedly, the usage is a bit different--it's not just "hearing the
yips", but "getting the yips".

Then, there is the following--and it's not even from any golf context!
http://bit.ly/b3Yaoh
Timothy Fuller. This is Murder, Mr. Jones. 1943 [WorldCat gives a
somewhat ambiguous pub. date of 1945 with copyright of 1943, but both
Harvard and BPL have copies (offsite) and both catalogues list it as 1943.]
p. 82
> The party was beginning to develop a fair case of the yips.

I have little doubt that the meaning is related to that in golf. But
this citation predates all available golf-related citations. So it's
interesting.

GB also identifies "Newsweek, Volume 31" from "1948" as another related
cite, but it seems to be even more difficult to confirm--no page number,
no issue, no certainty of even the year or the volume being correct. But
the text is right on:

> Dick and Barbara George Button plainly had the yips: in the space of
> three minutes he dropped his cigar five times. Mrs. Button wasn't much
> better off: she repeatedly fumbled her scoring pencil.

So the golf expression appears to have been adopted from an entirely
different context, unless golfers had been using it long before its
formal appearance in print.

GB has several other interdating hits which I omitted. They may,
however, be useful in ascertaining the precise meaning of the expression
and whether it continued to be used in contexts other than golf. But
narrowing down the appropriate quotes is quite difficult, as they are
interspersed among the references to dog yips and other verbal
expressions that resemble the dog sounds. For the moment, this is the
best I could do.

     VS-)

PS: I would verify the BPL-owned volume had I still been in Boston. But,
I'm now in Colorado, completely without resources, other than my laptop
and the BPL/Minuteman account.

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: "yips" - Word of the Day from the OED
Date: Fri, 01 Oct 2010 01:30:00 +0100

yips, n. pl. colloq. (j{shti}ps)  [Origin obscure.]
     In Golf, a state of nervousness which causes a player to miss an
easy putt in a competition. Usu. with the def. article.

1963 Times 10 June 4/2 His left-below-right putting stroke designed to
prevent the 'yips', is most effective once it begins to flow. 1972 Tel.
(Brisbane) 1 Jan. 5/7 Nevertheless, Jones got a dose of what golfers
call 'the yips'. 1984 Times 21 Sept. 9/4 Golfers suffer from the 'yips',
which means that their muscles seize up and freeze when they are faced
with a short putt and they cannot play the stroke.

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