[Ads-l] Antedating of "Yeah"

[Jonathan Lighter]

But Fred may be vindicated by this:

1858 _Evening Post_ (N.Y.C,) (Jun. 18) 2 [G]: "Gosh, sakes alive!
Whar's der polisse? Yeah, yeah, yeah!" And where were the police?

I imagine "polisse" represents / 'po lIs /.

JL

On Sat, Oct 17, 2026 at 7:27 AM Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I can't argue with the spelling, but there's a complication.
>
> "Yeh! Yeh! [sic]" appears frequently in mid-nineteenth-century
> representations of AAVE, but after a while I realized it wasn't "Yeah!
> Yeah!"
>
> It was "Heh! Heh!"
>
> Ex.:
>
> 1850 Daily Picayune (N.O.) (Feb. 14) 1 [G] : Ringing loud above the
> din came a regular "_yeah, yeah, yeah whooah!_ from the darkest of the
> colored party in the box.  It was...the clearest, deepest, loudest,
> heartiest laugh perhaps ever heard.
>
> Not to say Fred's ex. isn't legit, but what we really need is an ex.
> where "Yeah!" or "Yeh!" or "Yea!" or even "Yah!" is clearly an
> affirmative reply.
>
> JL
>
> On Fri, Oct 16, 2026 at 9:06 PM Shapiro, Fred
> <00001ac016895344-dmarc-request at listserv.uga.edu> wrote:
> >
> > yeah (OED 1863)
> >
> > 1862 Weekly Vincennes (Indiana) Sun 29 Nov. 2/3 (Newspapers.com)
> >
> > An old darkey acting as cook in this company ... shakes his wooly head ominously when the big guns thunder and says. ... ["] Stonewall has a smart chance ob men ober der — whar will dis ole niggur be found den ? ... dats Sartin.  Yeah1 Yeah !"
> >
> > Fred Shapiro
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>
>
>
> --
> "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."



-- 
"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."

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