Editing Yahoo (Gulliver's Travels)

{{Short description|Fictional being}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=April 2022}}
{{DISPLAYTITLE:Yahoo (''Gulliver's Travels'')}}
{{Infobox fictional race
| name        = Yahoo
| image       = The Servants Drive a Herd of Yahoos into the Field, from Gulliver's Travels.jpg
| caption     = ''The Servants Drive a Herd of Yahoos into the Field'' by Louis John Rhead, [[Metropolitan Museum of Art]]
| series      = [[Gulliver's Travels]]
| type        = 
| home_world  = 
| first       = ''[[Gulliver's Travels]]'' 
}}

'''Yahoos''' are [[legendary being|legendary]] human beings in the 1726 satirical novel ''[[Gulliver's Travels]]'' written by [[Jonathan Swift]].<ref name="Chowdhury" />  Their behaviour and character representation is meant to comment on the state of Europe from Swift's point of view.<ref name=Chowdhury>{{Cite journal|last=Chowdhury|first=Romana|date=April 2014|title=Swift's Use of Satire in Gulliver's Travels|url=http://dspace.bracu.ac.bd/bitstream/handle/10361/3320/10203020.pdf?sequence=1|journal=BRAC University|pages=31–36}}</ref>  The word "yahoo" was coined by Jonathan Swift in the fourth section of ''Gulliver's Travels''<ref name="etymonline">{{OEtymD|yahoo|access-date=31 August 2018}}</ref> and has since entered the English language more broadly.

Swift describes Yahoos as filthy with unpleasant habits, "a brute in human form,"<ref name="etymonline" /> resembling human beings far too closely for the liking of protagonist [[Lemuel Gulliver]]. He finds the calm and rational society of intelligent horses, the [[Houyhnhnm]]s, greatly preferable.

The Yahoos are primitive creatures obsessed with "pretty stones" that they find by digging in mud, thus representing the distasteful [[Economic materialism|materialism]] and ignorant [[elitism]] Swift encountered in Britain. Hence the term "yahoo" has come to mean "a crude, brutish or obscenely coarse person".<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/yahoo?showCookiePolicy=true |title=yahoo |work=[[Collins English Dictionary]] |access-date=May 28, 2014}}</ref>

==In popular culture==
*The American frontiersman [[Daniel Boone]], who often used terms from ''Gulliver's Travels'', claimed that he killed a hairy giant that he called a Yahoo.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-16334432.html |title=Did fiction give birth to Bigfoot? by Hugh H. Trotti |access-date=2007-03-20 |url-status=bot: unknown |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080218194606/http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-16334432.html |archive-date=18 February 2008 }}</ref>
*The fictitious country of Yahoo was the setting for [[Bertolt Brecht]]'s 1936 play ''[[Round Heads and Pointed Heads]]''.
*Yahoo was used as a cry of elation in a song from the 1961 Hindi film ''Junglee''.<ref>[https://gaana.com/song/yahoo-chahe-koi-mujhe-junglee-kahe-1 "Yahoo Chahe Koi Mujhe Junglee Kahe"]</ref>
*Yahoos were referred to in a letter sent by [[serial killer]] [[David Berkowitz]] to New York City police while committing the "Son of Sam" murders in 1976.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.crimelibrary.com/serial_killers/notorious/berkowitz/letter_1.html |title=David Berkowitz: The Son of Sam |last1=Bardsley |first1=Marilyn |work=[[Crime Library]] |access-date=May 28, 2014 |archive-date=29 May 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140529085237/http://www.crimelibrary.com/serial_killers/notorious/berkowitz/letter_1.html |url-status=dead }}</ref><ref>[https://books.google.com/books?id=SZTPdM97kq0C&dq=%22.I.don't.belong.on.Earth-Return.me.to.Yahoos%22&pg=PA124 Killer Book of Serial Killers: Incredible Stories, Facts, and Trivia from ... - Tom Philbin, Michael Philbin - Google Boeken<!-- Bot generated title -->]</ref>
*Brazilian poet [[João Cabral de Melo Neto]] 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==
<references/>

{{Gulliver's Travels}}

[[Category:Fictional species and races]]
[[Category:Pejorative terms for people]]
[[Category:Gulliver's Travels]]
[[Category:Quotations from literature]]
[[Category:1720s neologisms]]


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