yeet

You might have noticed that people yeet things now. It's a specific type of throwing. Here's a helpful hint I saw on twitter this week:

'Yoink' is the opposite of 'yeet'

Until as recently as January, I thought there was a regional difference in this word. The American Dialect Society had it as one of their Words of 2018, but with the meaning 'indication of surprise or excitement' - an exclamation. It was said to be onomatopoeic, the sound of yeeting something into a bin or whatever and 'pronounced with a celebratory gesture'. 

Urban dictionary seems to have only the exclamation in the older entries (though still accompanying the yeeting action of course). And as with so many new words, it may well come from black American pop culture, originating or possibly just finding new life in a dance. 

It may well have been onomatopoeic over here as well, but it was very definitely a verb of throwing, not an exclamation. What's more, because of its similarity to our Germanic-origin irregular verbs, it's got a past tense of yote and takes part in wordplay like yeeteth in the tweet above (see also twote for the past tense of tweet). 

I don't know if the two senses have always been available to everyone and it was just different bits of them got out into the mainstream, or if they've converged more recently. And I am FULLY aware of how painfully white and middle-aged and out of touch I sound just writing this post.