• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to footer
Women's Legacy Project
  • Home
  • About
  • How To Curate
  • Our Collective Legacy
  • Writing Online Memoir
  • Blog
Women's Legacy Project > Blog > KNOW > Information and Tech > Never Had a Yacht, Never Will Have a Yacht: Musings on the Letter Y

Never Had a Yacht, Never Will Have a Yacht: Musings on the Letter Y

Written by: womenslegacy
Published: April 28, 2012 -- Last Modified: April 28, 2012
6 Comments

“Yacht” is a status word, vessel, and club.  Yachts serve as the secret X-ray decoder rings for the upper class in our society.  I wonder if it is related to the word “yah?”

yah 1 |yä|
nounBrit. informal
an upper-class person: the cafe is full of yahs whose daddies own chateaux in France.
ORIGIN representation of a pronunciation of ‘yes’ in British upper-class speech.
yah 2 |yä, ya|
exclam.
expressing derision: yah, you missed!
ORIGIN natural exclamation: first recorded in English in the early 17th cent.

Please hang in with me through this paragraph and allow me to let you in on a little secret: if you cannot afford to have a yacht then you cannot afford to be a Republican in today’s Republican party.  There, I did it, I got political.  Sorry.  I have been a life-long Democrat because Dad taught me how to think, and I think about things from a Democratic perspective.  Had my dad been a Republican, there would have been a much greater chance that I would have turned out to be a Republican.  This is the unfortunate part of politics in America.  We too often blindly adopt views because those we care about have those views.  I encourage everyone to look at the issues, find out the facts, and then make your own determination about political positions that issue that make sense from both short and long term perspectives.   I wrote a post earlier this month for the day that covered the letter ” M,” that talked about the importance of fact finding and fact checking.

View of yachts from my room at BlogHer '11


 
I do some of my best writing when I allow my mind to wander and just yammer on.

yammer |ˈyamər|
noun informal or dialect
loud and sustained or repetitive noise: the yammer of their animated conversation | the yammer of enemy fire.
verb [ no obj. ] informal or dialect
make a loud repetitive noise.
• talk volubly.
DERIVATIVES
yammerer noun
ORIGIN late Middle English (as a verb meaning ‘lament, cry out’): alteration of earlier yomer (from Old English geōmrian ‘to lament’) suggested by Middle Dutch jammeren .

That way I can work in almost anything and go on and on until another inspiration strikes.  I live for inspiration.  I love the little click it makes when it turns on the light bulb over my head.  That is sort of like when I realized I could write about “Y’all,” and “All Y’all.”  Being as I’m a Yankee, I had a lot to learn about the dialects of the South according to Hubby who spent the first few years of his life and every summer from when he started school until he was in High School in Tennessee.  Seems according to colloquial standards y’all is singular, and all y’all is plural and proper usage requires this knowledge.  This is often misunderstood:

y’all |yôl|
contraction
you-all.
you-all |ˈyo͞o ˌôl, yôl|(also y’all )
pronoun dialect
(in the southern US) you (used to refer to more than one person): how are you-all?

What this definition, and I get my definitions from the Apple Dictionary that is I believe is based upon the Oxford American Dictionary,  does not understand is that y’all can refer to a single person or a very small group of people as contrasted with a large group of people that may be made up of other groups.  I love this stuff!  Language is soooo cool.
Sometimes language causes me problems though.  I cannot keep the words yay, yeah, and yea straight when it comes to written language.  I wonder what this says about me neurologically? Hmmm.  Anyway, I digress.  Somewhere along the line someone told me that the positive exclamation was spelled yeah.  I thought the person meant when that when you say,  “Yay! Rah!  Ziff Boom Bah!” that it was spelled y-e-a-h.  It is not.
I think what the person intended to tell me, was that when you intend to make a very informal declaration of positive emotion where you would use the word, yes, if you were using completely proper English, you use the word yeah that has two proper pronounciations:

yeah |ye(ə), ya(ə)|(also yeh )
exclam.& noun
nonstandard spelling of yes, representing informal pronunciation.

An example of this usage would be:  He said, as he placed the cards on the table, fanning the winning hand out for all to see, “Yeah, I think this tops your three of a kind.
The word “yea” comes into my mixed up mix of confusion because, visually, it has more similarity with “yeah” than “yay” in my mind’s eye.

yea 1 |yā|
adverb archaic or formal
yes: she has the right to say yea or nay.
• used for emphasis, esp. to introduce a stronger or more accurate word than one just used: he was full, yea, crammed with anxieties.
noun archaic or formal
an affirmative answer: the assembly would give the final yea or nay.
• (in the US Congress) an affirmative vote.
ORIGIN Old English gēa, gē, of Germanic origin; related to Dutch and German ja .
yea 2 |yā|
adverb
variant spelling of yay2.
yay 2 |yā|(also yea )
adverb informal
(with adjectives of measure) so; to this extent: I knew him when he was yay big.
ORIGIN 1960s: probably a variant of the adverb yea1.

But it sounds just like “yay” but without the emphasis. And that of course is not to be confused with “yay” used as a synomym for the word “so.”  Now do I have you confused?  Sorry.  I’ve always wanted to write about this so as to have a written piece to which I may refer when I get confused about it with all the homonyms and homophones,  which I still sometimes do.  Believe me, when you over-think things like I do, confusion is the modus operandi.
And this discussion doesn’t even bring the confusion Lil Jon brought into the mix, for white folks of my age via Chappelle  (who is a genius!), with “Yay-ahh!”

Comedy Central

Oh, and by the way, if you routinely used to watch the Chappelle Show, or use the contraction “y’all” you probably should not vote Republican if you want to vote in your own best interest.
Have a nice flight… er… I mean day!
 
 

Categories: Information and TechTags: A to Z Blog Challenge, all y'all, chappelle, dialects, GBE2, language, Lil Jon, nablopomo, Politics and Punditry, Republicans, y'all, Yacht, yay, yea, yeah, yes

Support Independent Bookstores - Visit IndieBound.org
Previous Post: « The eXceptional World of The Letter X
Next Post: Sanity Sunday »

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Kathy

    April 28, 2012 at 1:57 pm

    I am in that club too. I will never have a yacht either. 😀 Oh well such is life! LOL
    Kathy
    http://gigglingtruckerswife.blogspot.com

    Reply
    • Nancy

      April 28, 2012 at 2:48 pm

      🙂 Nah, I wouldn’t want one either.

      Reply
  2. sandra Tyler

    April 28, 2012 at 1:58 pm

    No yaht and good thing I’m liberal since I don’t even desire one:))

    Reply
    • Nancy

      April 28, 2012 at 2:49 pm

      LOL. I mean, really, it would just be something else to clean and maintain!

      Reply
  3. Paula Martin

    April 29, 2012 at 8:09 am

    I wouldn’t want a yacht either – but wouldn’t mind a cruise liner for a couple of weeks!

    Reply
    • Nancy

      April 29, 2012 at 9:50 am

      I’d be up for a few days of sailing between islands!

      Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

CommentLuv badgeShow more posts

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Footer

Recent Posts

  • Ending, and Beginning
  • For Our Daughters
  • Stand and Write
  • Context and Little Things
  • A Month is Just a Month… as Time Goes By
  • Processing Two Very Different Deaths
  • A Dehydrated and Delusional Friend Found Wandering in 100° Heat
  • About Women’s Legacy & Hill Research
  • Privacy Policy and Terms of Use

Archives

Powered by
  • Email
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • LinkedIn
  • Pinterest
  • Twitter
View my Flipboard Magazine.

© 2023, Nancy Hill, Women's Legacy Project of Hill Research Services, LLC

This website uses cookies to improve your experience. We'll assume you're ok with this, but you can opt-out if you wish.Accept Reject Read More
Privacy & Cookies Policy

Privacy Overview

This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these cookies, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may have an effect on your browsing experience.
Necessary
Always Enabled
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Non-necessary
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
SAVE & ACCEPT