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Definition of "yawp" []

  • To utter a sharp cry; yelp. (verb-intransitive)
  • To talk loudly, raucously, or coarsely. (verb-intransitive)
  • A bark; a yelp. (noun)
  • Loud or coarse talk or utterance: "I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world” ( Walt Whitman). (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Use "yawp" in a sentence
  • "The concert explores the "yawp" - and its implications for the "primitive and direct poetics" that Coleman argues is distinctly American."
  • "It thus becomes an inarticulate patriotic "yawp," of tremendous ear-splitting power."
  • "Keating is even the kind of educator who can coax from a shy, stuttering student (Ethan Hawke) Walt Whitman's famed "barbaric yawp.""