Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A wild, shaggy-haired ox (Bos grunniens) of the mountains of central Asia.
  • noun A domesticated yak, used as a work animal or raised for meat and milk.
  • intransitive verb To talk persistently and meaninglessly; chatter.
  • noun Prolonged, sometimes senseless talk; chatter.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The wild ox of Tibet, Poëphagus grunniens, or any of its domesticated varieties; the grunting ox.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun (Zoöl.) A bovine mammal (Poëphagus grunnies) native of the high plains of Central Asia. Its neck, the outer side of its legs, and its flanks, are covered with long, flowing, fine hair. Its tail is long and bushy, often white, and is valued as an ornament and for other purposes in India and China. There are several domesticated varieties, some of which lack the mane and the long hair on the flanks. Called also chauri gua, grunting cow, grunting ox, sarlac, sarlik, and sarluc.
  • noun a coarse pillow lace made from the silky hair of the yak.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun An ox-like mammal native to the Himalayas and Tibet with dark, long and silky hair a horse like tail and a full, bushy mane.
  • verb To talk, particularly informally but persistently, such as chatter.
  • verb To vomit, usually as a result of excessive alcohol consumption.
  • noun A talk, particular an informal one such as chattering.
  • noun slang A laugh
  • noun Vomit.
  • noun slang shorthand for kayak

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun noisy talk
  • noun large long-haired wild ox of Tibet often domesticated
  • verb talk profusely

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Tibetan gyag.]

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Imitative.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Tibetan གཡག (g.yak).

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

apparently an onomatopoeia

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Examples

  • I need my mental space and you deserve someone better yak yak yak…

    natinski Diary Entry natinski 2002

  • They have horses and ponies, but the yak is the beast of burden, and he supplies them with his long shaggy coat with plenty of wool (which they export and from which they make their clothes), and also supplies them with milk.

    The Assault on Everest 1928

  • A new wrinkle in the proliferation of sports talk radio: sports yak from a Christian perspective.

    Online chatter trends don't follow polls 2009

  • What do you call a yak who gives off power in the sun?

    TravelPod.com TravelStream™ — Recent Entries at TravelPod.com 2010

  • The riverside town of Cognac has for four centuries been the home of cognac-making, now a booming export trade, not least among the American rapper fraternity where it's known as "yak".

    Classic France: the insiders' guide 2011

  • For Tsawang Dumi, his yak is the equivilent of Rhodri's ministerial car.

    Rhodri and Tsawang Glyn Davies 2007

  • For Tsawang Dumi, his yak is the equivilent of Rhodri's ministerial car.

    Archive 2007-02-01 Glyn Davies 2007

  • Sad for all that his yak was a fine, strong beast and its saddle of tooled leather with silver trappings; and despite the fact that his robe was new and rich, his saddle bags fully provisioned and his purse crammed with gold.

    Hero Of Dreams Lumley, Brian 1986

  • The yak is a fast-moving animal, and started forward on a run, soon gaining the shelter selected.

    The Wonder Island Boys: The Tribesmen Roger Thompson Finlay

  • Up to this point we had been using mules and ponies, and we now took the yak, which is the main transportation animal of Thibet.

    The Assault on Everest 1928

  • Yak shaving is to start working on one task that leads you to perform another, and results in a seemingly never ending queue of tasks, diverting you from the original goal.

    5 Commonly Used Idioms in the Tech Industry Karina Chow 2023

  • Carlin Vieri, another MIT matriculant, coined the term “yak shaving” to refer to problems that arise in the course of trying to solve a problem.

    Stripe: Thinking Like a Civilization | The Generalist Artwork by 2023

Comments

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  • Kay in reverse.

    November 3, 2007

  • Suddenly I'm up and forcing myself perversely to see something, anything other and more than the still-life rectangle conjured by my implacable windows.  There's Marsaxlokk and its Lego-boat harbour fringed by dead fish staring glassily forever.  There're the balcony-fringed streets of Valletta, too precipitous to give full symphonic backing to the meticulous grid layout.  Pock-marked bastions spill over with tightly-clinging weeds and the resignation of being admiringly sighed at for the millionth time.  There's the Centru Laburista bar pouring Nescafe for twenty-five cents into the cups of never-were-revolutionaries.  There're the glowing streets of the old capital still haunted by leering gargoyles and the whiff of gunpowder stockpiles.  From the citadel of Mdina other villages shimmer and give way to other villages, an écru horizon carved out of yak butter.

    March 6, 2009

  • From the Century: "It is used as a beast of burden, makes excellent beef, and yields rich milk and butter; the long silky hair is spun and woven for many fabrics. The tails when mounted furnish the fly-snappers or chowries much used in India, and they are also dyed in various colors as decorations and ceremonial insignia. The elephant-headed god Ganesa is usually represented as flourishing the chowry with his trunk over the heads of various personages of the Hindu pantheon."

    October 14, 2011

  • Also a source of lengthy though somewhat dull conversation.

    October 14, 2011

  • Funny that there are no photograhs of kayaks in the visuals.

    October 15, 2011

  • Huh, no photos of yaks over at kayak either.

    October 15, 2011

  • Don't encourage them, Bilby. I wouldn't put it past them. I've come across some careless errors in my time here. But I've pointed them out, so hopefully they can be removed.

    October 15, 2011