Yahoos are legendary beings in the 1726 satirical novel '' Gulliver's Travels'' written by

Jonathan Swift Jonathan Swift (30 November 1667 – 19 October 1745) was an Anglo-Irish satirist, author, essayist, political pamphleteer (first for the Whigs, then for the Tories), poet, and Anglican cleric who became Dean of St Patrick's Cathedral, Dubl ...

. Their behaviour and character representation is meant to comment on the state of Europe from Swift's point of view. The word "yahoo" was coined by Jonathan Swift in the fourth section of ''Gulliver's Travels'' and has since entered the English language more broadly. Swift describes Yahoos as filthy with unpleasant habits, "a brute in human form," resembling human beings far too closely for the liking of protagonist

Lemuel Gulliver Lemuel Gulliver () is the fictional protagonist and narrator of ''Gulliver's Travels'', a novel written by Jonathan Swift, first published in 1726. In ''Gulliver's Travels'' According to Swift's novel, Gulliver was born in Nottinghamshire c. ...

. He finds the calm and rational society of intelligent horses, the

Houyhnhnm Houyhnhnms are a fictional race of intelligent horses described in the last part of Jonathan Swift's satirical 1726 novel ''Gulliver's Travels''. The name is pronounced either or . Swift apparently intended all words of the Houyhnhnm language ...

s, greatly preferable. The Yahoos are primitive creatures obsessed with "pretty stones" that they find by digging in mud, thus representing the distasteful materialism and ignorant elitism Swift encountered in Britain. Hence the term "yahoo" has come to mean "a crude, brutish or obscenely coarse person".

In popular culture

*The American frontiersman

Daniel Boone Daniel Boone (September 26, 1820) was an American pioneer and frontiersman whose exploits made him one of the first folk heroes of the United States. He became famous for his exploration and settlement of Kentucky, which was then beyond the we ...

, who often used terms from ''Gulliver's Travels'', claimed that he killed a hairy giant that he called a Yahoo. *The fictitious country of Yahoo was the setting for Bertolt Brecht's 1936 play ''

Round Heads and Pointed Heads ''Round Heads and Pointed Heads'' (german: Die Rundköpfe und die Spitzköpfe) is an epic parable play written by the German dramatist Bertolt Brecht, in collaboration with Margarete Steffin, Emil Burri, Elisabeth Hauptmann, and the composer Han ...

''. *Yahoo was used as a cry of elation in a song from the 1961 Hindi film ''Junglee''. *Yahoos were referred to in a letter sent by

serial killer A serial killer is typically a person who murders three or more persons,A * * * * with the murders taking place over more than a month and including a significant period of time between them. While most authorities set a threshold of three ...

David Berkowitz David Richard Berkowitz (born Richard David Falco, June 1, 1953), also known as the Son of Sam and .44 Caliber Killer, is an American serial killer who pleaded guilty to eight shootings that began in New York City on July 29, 1976. Berkowitz ...

to New York City police while committing the "Son of Sam" murders in 1976.Killer Book of Serial Killers: Incredible Stories, Facts, and Trivia from ... - Tom Philbin, Michael Philbin - Google Boeken
/ref> *Brazilian poet

João Cabral de Melo Neto João Cabral de Melo Neto (January 6, 1920 – October 9, 1999) was a Brazilian poet and diplomat, and one of the most influential writers in late Brazilian modernism. He was awarded the 1990 Camões Prize and the 1992 Neustadt International Pr ...

used the term Yahoo as a metaphor for the rude northeastern Brazilian men in two poems called "The Country of the Houyhnhnms", in his book "Education by the Stone".

References

Fictional human races Pejorative terms for people Gulliver's Travels Quotations from literature 1720s neologisms {{fictional-character-stub