Perhaps you know this word from the work of that most American of poets, Whitman:
The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me….. he complains of my gab and my loitering.
I too am not a bit tamed….. I too am untranslatable,
I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.Song of Myself, Leaves of Grass, Walt Whitman, 18551
Webster’s Third defines it as “a raucous noise; foolish complaining talk; something suggestive of a raucous noise.”
The OED dates the noun “yawp” to 1824, but the verb form to around 1400. Definitions there are:
a. A harsh, hoarse, or querulous cry, esp. of a bird.
b. fig. Applied in contempt to speech or utterance likened to this. Chiefly U.S.
Many of the poets (see Allen Ginsberg and the beats, for instance) cherish this word; they identify with Whitman’s yawp. Yawp in this sense embodies a stridency — confident, assured, and loud — that will be heard, no matter what.
It is not to be confused with yap or yowl!
1 See the excellent Walt Whitman Archive here.
Frontispiece, Leaves of Grass, 1855
Whitman in Camden, 1887, by Thomas Eakins
