I found only one other instance of Australian slang usage of yike, in Thomas Hungerford, Riverslake (1953) the meaning there seems to be a fight or tussle. Here yike seems to refer to the game or sporting event or (perhaps) prize fight at which the scalper is trying to resell his "briefs" (tickets). When I tail 'em and cockatoo 'em buyin' their ducats for the yike, I know I'm sweet- Jacks never pay for nothin'." I palm the briefs and front 'em and I'm a quick jerry they ain't john hops. "I'm dropping briefs at the yike and someone drums me there's two Jacks on me hammer. In fact, the next slang use of yike to appear in the results appears in a 1943 issue of American Speech in the context of Australian slang used to describe a ticket scalper outside a sporting event who initially suspects that two ordinary citizens are plainclothes policemen : Army roll-call in Hamilton Higday, " A Day in the Regular Army," in The World's Work (New York, January 1903):īut neither the English fox-hunt yikes from 1845 nor the American roll-call yike from 1903 seems to have inspired any similar expressions in the Google Book database in the decades immediately following their appearance. First, we hear the cracking of a whip in the side-scenes, quite as loud and continued, but not half as well done as that of a postilion's arriving from Marseilles or any other Continental town : then we are treated with sundry yoyks, or yikes, or yohikes, or some such unheard-of, and let us hope never-to-be-heard-again, sounds.īut that's the last we hear of any similar exclamation in Google Books results until 1903, where yike arises as a response to a U.S. We will suppose a fox-hunter is to come on : let me see if I can come at all near the thing by description. The strongest case I can make for the modern term yikes as a lineal descendant of yoicks-a call to one's hounds during a hunt-is that the two words appear together in Harry Hieover, Stable Talk and Table Talk, or Spectacles for Young Sportsmen (London, 1845): Though my view on this question is by no means incontestable, I base it on some circumstantial considerations that at least seem consistent with such a derivation. Rather, I think that yikes emerged in the United States as a variant of the slightly older word yipes, which itself may have arisen in connection with "yip" and "yipe"-sounds that a dog makes. I don't think that yikes as an exclamation has any direct connection to yoicks or hoicks, or with yike (the cry of the green woodpecker of Britain and continental Europe, recorded starting in the late 1800s), or with the baby-talk word yikes meaning "likes" and popular in the late 1800s and early 1900s)-or for that matter with yikes in the eighteenth-century Polish/Yiddish sense of "family and academic background" or with Yike in the sense of a traditional Siamese theatrical performance described by nineteenth-century travelers. They basically say the same thing as OED. Note: I checked grammarphobia and Oxford Dictionary of Modern Slang. Why wouldn't it be mentioned as onomatopoeic? (but then one asks it is an imitative of what?) The possible ultimate origin hoicks has an unknown origin also, according to OED. In the light of these findings, what would be the conclusion and can we find other credible sources? There are two possible routes here and OED is bold to say that origin of yikes is unknown. For example, a similar word eek is an imitative of a shriek or squeak. This sense of yike suggests that yikes might be an onomatopoeia also. The earlier examples I could find are related to yike meaning:Īn imitation of the cry of the woodpecker. In fact, for this sense of yikes, the earliest citations I could find are from 1960 (from the book Where the boys are by Glendon Fred Swarthout): The earliest citation for yikes in OED is from 1971 but Etymonline gives 1953. Now, OED says origin unknown for hoicks as well.Įtymonline says "exclamation of alarm or surprise, by 1953 perhaps from yoicks, a call in fox-hunting, attested from c. Here is a reference to the Turbervile's Booke of Hunting (from Jyl of Breyntfords Testament by Robert Copland, Geoffrey Chaucer, George Gascoigne, Robert Laneham): OED gives the etymology of yoicks as:Ĭompare yoaks int., yoi int., and hoicks int., earlier hoik (1607), hoic, which is used similarly to, and appears to be a variant of, hike, hyke, as in hike hallow, hyke a Bewmont (see Turbervile Hunting 31, 112, 175). as an exclamation of excitement or exultation. Yoicks is defined in OED as a call used in fox-hunting to urge on the hounds also occas. OED says "Origin unknown, but compare yoicks int.". (humorous, slang) Expressing empathy with unpleasant or undesirable circumstances.
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