The Word of the Day for November 09 is:
yahoo \YAH-hoo\ noun
: a boorish, crass, or stupid person
Example sentence:
The local teenagers’ reputation as a bunch of yahoos was belied by their courteous treatment of the stranded motorists.
Did you know?
We know exactly how old “yahoo” is because its debut in print also marked its entrance into the English language as a whole. “Yahoo” began life as a made-up word invented by Jonathan Swift in his book Gulliver’s Travels, which was published in 1726. The Yahoos were a race of brutes, with the form and vices of humans, encountered by Gulliver in his fourth and final voyage. They represented Swift’s view of mankind at its lowest. It is not surprising, then, that “yahoo” came to be applied to any actual human who was particularly unpleasant or unintelligent. Yahoos were controlled by the intelligent and virtuous Houyhnhnms, a word which apparently did not catch people’s fancy as “yahoo” did.
*Indicates the sense illustrated in the example sentence.
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ps. and we wonder why so many people use http://www.yahoo.com