(in Swift'sGulliver's Travels ) one of a race of brutes, having the form and all the vices of humans, who are subject to the Houyhnhnms.
(lowercase) an uncultivated or boorish person; lout; philistine; yokel.
(lowercase) a coarse or brutish person.
First recorded in 1975–80; of imitative origin
Coined by Swift in Gulliver's Travels (1726)
Have you ever heard people talk insultingly about uneducated, uncultured country folks? They probably referred to them as yahoos. If someone calls you a yahoo, it's definitely an insult. Yahoos are thought to have very little education and culture. People think of yahoos as folks who were raised in a barn — maybe literally. A yahoo can also be called a bumpkin, hayseed, hick, rube, yokel, or hillbilly. You can't really be a yahoo if you're from a big city. So if you want to insult someone from New York, you'll need to find a different word.
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Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Second, Alaskans can’t afford to send any old yahoo to Congress for trolling purposes; the state is heavily dependent on federal money and needs someone deft at bringing home the bacon.
From Slate • Apr. 9, 2022
Back on 1, Lee Westwood cracks the opening drive of match three down the middle, refusing to follow the advice of the yahoo who cried “Get in the bunker!”
From The Guardian • Sep. 24, 2021
Whether he couldn’t get in or simply found the best sightlines for scoping Petty’s pedal board, some yahoo outside the glass window behind them was rocking out on Pike Street.
From Seattle Times • Feb. 6, 2021
Make a mistake and rest assured that some yahoo recorded it for prosperity and that it now lives online until the end of time!
From Salon • Sep. 15, 2018
“Some yahoo pulled up to the wrong gate. There’s not supposed to be anyone at that gate until the Cleveland flight at nine thirty.”
From "Found" by Margaret Peterson Haddix
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
