yawp
/jɔːp
/noun
1A harsh or hoarse cry or yelp: the cur did not bark, other than a single yawp...
- Gripping the Ruler with two hands, he launched himself at the demon with a barbaric yawp.
- For my money, it's when Alien swells his chest and lets out his yawp that he writes most compellingly.
- The countdown began and with a war yawp Patton blasted into the sky.
1.1 [mass noun] North American Foolish or noisy talk: therefore his yawp is tolerated, even appreciated...
- If it's a guilty pleasure, a loud sloppy nihilistic yawp aimed at film-school graduates, fine. Say so and be done with it.
- Amid the ensuing communal yawp is one unconverted smartass - a cipher, if you will, for a music scene fraught with carefully cultivated, ultimately unrevealing, laughably insecure projections of ‘cool’ - who yells back, ‘I'm dead!’
verb [no object]
1Shout or exclaim hoarsely: the fans screeched, yawped, and pounded their palms...
- I yawp when you stop breathing because in you is my own wish to survive.
1.1North American Talk foolishly or noisily: it’s as well not to yawp much about our going alone...
- In ‘Self Repeating Poem, ‘he yawps about the absurdity of a world in which we ‘eat ideas with whipped cream and die of hunger.’
Derivatives
yawper
- Delphine, who was the yawper, also jumped to her feet and Josephine sloshed her own coffee with chicory into its saucer.
- Some kids emerged as the true heirs of Whitman, barbaric yawpers singing their own songs of themselves.
- Rather than arguing, in time - honored GOP fashion, that the wealthy should pay less taxes, conservative yawpers will run around advocating an ‘IRS reform’ to simplify the complicated tax forms that we all hate filling out - coincidentally by eliminating graduated tax rates.
Origin
Middle English (as a verb): imitative. The noun dates from the early 19th century.