Yawp

Word of the Day for Sunday, July 7, 2013

Yawp \yawp, yahp\, verb:

1. to utter a loud, harsh cry; to yelp, squawk, or bawl.
2. Slang. to talk noisily and foolishly or complainingly.

noun:
1. a harsh cry.
2. Slang. a. raucous or querulous speech. b. a noisy, foolish utterance.

Two weeks while the lawyers were left like hounds to yawp over what counted as admissible evidence and what was mere gambit and divide, desperate countermeasures.
-- Edie Meidav, Crawl Space, 2006

You don't yawp to God. Bach doesn't yawp to God
-- Marc Estrin, Golem Song, 2006

I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable, I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.
-- Walt Whitman, Song of Myself, 1891

Yawp is a very old English word. It entered English in the 1300s and comes from the Middle English word yolpen. It is related to the word yelp. Walt Whitman popularised the noun sense of the word in his book Song of Myself.

Thanks to: www.dictionary.com