yahoo

From Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift, where it is the name of a race of brutes.[1]

• IPA^(key): /ˈjɑːhuː/

yahoo (plural yahoos)

1. (derogatory) A rough, coarse, loud or uncouth person; yokel; lout.
2. (cryptozoology) A humanoid cryptid said to exist in parts of eastern Australia, and also reported in the Bahamas.
   • 1835, James Holman, Travels, quoted by Malcolm Smith, Bunyips and Bigfoots (Millennium Books, 1996, →ISBN, who notes that the Australian sense almost certainly derives from Gulliver's Travels, despite Holman's report

     The natives are greatly terrrified by the sight of a person in a mask calling him "devil" or Yah-hoo, which signifies evil spirit.

   • 1985, Michael Raynal, Yahoos in the Bahamas, Cryptozoology, volume 4:

• (a rough, coarse, or uncouth person): yokel, lout

Expressive.

• IPA^(key): /jəˈhuː/

yahoo

1. An exclamation of joy.
2. A battle cry.

yahoo (third-person singular simple present yahoos, present participle yahooing, simple past and past participle yahooed)

1. To give a cry of "yahoo".
2. (Internet, informal) To search using the Yahoo! search engine.
   • 2008, Frederick Thomas, Buddha's Bones, Buddha's Bones (→ISBN), page 46:

     I searched, Yahooed, Googled and everything else I could. A server came by and ... Feeling stupid for not bothering to ask mom for the first name, I checked their website profiles and discovered that Emile was the father of Zaire. So, the Doctor  ...

   • 2017, Rajendra Pillai, Unearthed: Discover Life as God's Masterpiece, New Hope Publishers (→ISBN)

     In other words, none of our googling and yahooing is private (you knew that, right ?). This guy has been ... In other words, in the privacy of online searches, people were much more open to sharing their deepest fears. According to Tancer's ...

   • 2007, Tell

     Ah! You mean you have been 'yahooing'? I'm dead! 4 Ribadu must not hear ... From America Online, Asia Online and Africa Online, man is exposed to different socio-cultural attributes and technological advances. At the press of a mere button, ...

   • 1999, Thomas Riggs, Major Marketing Campaigns Annual, 1999, Gale Cengage (→ISBN)

     "It reinforces the idea that when I go to Yahoo!, I'll be so pleased I'll be Yahooing afterwards." The name also ... More people accessed Yahoo! at work than any other website, and it ranked second only to America Online in traffic from home.

• ooyah