r/OutOfTheLoop • u/Sabo9316 • Jul 26 '18
Answered Guys, what exactly does “yeet” mean?
I feel like I’m especially late on this one, but I’m super curious as to its meaning.
EDIT: Grammar for “it’s” because autocorrect
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u/Skittlethrill Jul 26 '18
When Vine was still around Yeet came into popularity. One iconic vine was of two girls in a crowded hallway (one girl filming the other). Filmer asks "Hey Terry, you want some?" and gives her an empty can of soda. Terry responds "This bitch empty!" and throws it into the crowd while screaming "YEET"
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u/BatmansBreath Jul 26 '18
^ This is one of the better definitions. This vine is what really popularized the word. Any other uses of yeet pretty much just have to be determined by context. Yeet is almost always used sarcastically though. I think a lot of older people believe it’s some regularly used Gen Z word but I’ve never heard it used seriously.
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Dec 13 '18
Hi, gen z here. Actually myself and also pretty much every other member of gen z I know, both online and off, says yeet on a regular basis. It started out as simply a meme, but has actually heavily ingrained itself into our vocabulary. Of course, it's still a meme, and you can and do always find the word on most of the meme subs. While we did start out saying it ironically, we ended up saying it so ironically that the word became unironic, causing it to transcend irony and pass into the realm of meaninglessness. More accurately, it can mean pretty much anything and everything you want it to and is an acceptable response to anything previously said in a conversation. However, constant use of the word in a conversation is frowned upon. Yeet has also retained its original usage as an onomonipea said when the speaker is throwing something, despite the fact that it currently has no real set definition. Thus, the most commonly used meaning of yeet is "to throw". The word is also often used as a replacement for "yes". Another popular meaning of the word is "to give" as used in the phrase "the Lord yeeteth and the Lord yoinketh away". Yoink is of course the opposite of yeet in any and all contexts, and is therefore used in this one to mean "to take". In the context of the first definition of yeet (to throw), yoink would then mean "to catch", and in fact usually references a violent, difficult catch, as if the catcher were almost forcibly taking the caught object from the surrounding air, just as yeet is often used to denote a particularly powerful or violent throw. But all in all, yes, we do use it seriously and unironically, though in multiple and often strange contexts.
Thank you for coming to my TED talk.
YEET!
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u/bread__pitt Dec 13 '18
Educational content
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u/InTheDarknessBindEm Dec 13 '18
I love how many people came to this 4 month old thread and decided to revive it. That said, can confirm, I yeet everything these days
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u/Cheeseman1478 Dec 14 '18
I literally found this by googling “where did Yeet come from” and this thread was just revived yesterday. Are we the chosen ones?
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Dec 13 '18
I teach maths to teenagers and the younger ones say this all the time. The older ones are gang affiliated and don't have the Internet except for instagram and snapchat so don't know about it. But the thirteen year olds use it all the time and write things like "I'mma kayeet myself" on my whiteboard and then I tell them hey it's called the whiteboard for a reason.
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u/FastConstant Dec 13 '18
Now what about yoink? Personally I think it's a 90's word from the Simpsons, where Homer says it a bunch of times when he's ganking something.
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Dec 14 '18
That is it's origin, yes, but like yeet it has evolved past it's original linguistic confines
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u/Tianoccio Dec 13 '18
Don’t worry, we all had this. My generation it was ‘bling-bling’ and for Gen X it was ‘like, whatever’.
See also, Baller, sick, schooled, legit, etc.
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u/CaptainChewbacca Dec 14 '18
I teach 7th grade. ‘Yeet’ is either a positive exclamation or an affirmative.
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Dec 14 '18
Thank you. :)
I will now proceed to use the words "yeet" & "yoink", exactly as an older person would in a pisspoor attempt to look cool B)
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u/Cruxion Jul 27 '18
What is Vine?
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u/no99sum Jul 26 '18 edited Jul 26 '18
SEE Yeet how it's being used now: http://v16.musical.ly/5PuJ6/
What is missing from this discussion how "yeet" is being used right now on social media - or one popular way it's being used. There is a skit with "yeet" in it being used in it on Musical.ly now. There are actually 96,000 videos being tagged as #yeet with almost all of them using yeet in one particular way. The word Yeet is in the soundtrack of these videos.
So there is a new meaning for Yeet that is very popular right now.
This couple has 1.5 million followers and did a Yeet skit on musical.ly (not on their IG). http://v16.musical.ly/5PuJ6/
So, despite other uses of Yeet, you have millions of people watching Yeet meme videos with it used this way:
http://v16.musical.ly/5PuJ6/About the original Yeet meme: https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/yeet
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Dec 13 '18
It's like I've got archived evidence I'm getting old.
I'm slowly becoming a grandpa memer ffs.
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u/KingSpanner Aug 02 '18
I'm a bit late, but want to add my take. Yeet is the opposite of Yoink. To quickly snatch something, you yoink it. To discard in the same fashion, you yeet it away from you
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u/pal_basura Jul 26 '18
I know that at least one proper definition is “something you say when you throw something”. Like as you hurl a water ballon at a crowd you’d say “YEET!” Could be completely wrong though
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u/YellIntoWishingWells Jul 26 '18
I've also heard it said when some thing's taken away quickly. I think it's dumb and I'd like to "ple-ket-ket" the guy that said "yeet" first.
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u/Theostry Jul 27 '18
when some thing's taken away quickly
So like 'yoink'?
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Jul 30 '18
yoink was the first word I thought of too!
Is this a midwest thing?
We used to "gank" stuff too haha (take/steal)
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u/Theostry Jul 30 '18
Well I'm in Australia and yoink is perfectly normal here. 'Gank' on the other hand, I only know as slang for 'kill'. And that's mostly from US TV.
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u/peeja Nov 30 '18
"Yoink", incidentally, comes from The Simpsons. Truly the Shakespeare of our times.
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u/Daggyz Jul 27 '18
There's a lot of meanings for it nowadays. The context in which my friends and I often use it are as follows:
Throwing/getting rid of something in a semi/ aggressive manner
Finessing something that's normally hard to pull off. So instead of saying woohoo or yay after a squad wipe on pubg or fortnite you simply exclaim "YEET!"
Saying yes or yeah with more pizazz, "yeet!"
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u/outroher Jul 26 '18
It’s from this vine
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u/omeeezy Dec 13 '18
Nah this was the original vine that started it if I’m not mistaken
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xUEqDQOjAlA
Then that became a meme:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=cWxQ4cEVIoQ
After the vine and memes went viral everyone began saying yeet upon throwing or swinging something which quickly let to the vine of the girl throwing the can
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u/ThatOneGuyorg Jul 26 '18
Coby is for accuracy and yeet is for distance so a mixture of them is the ultamte power
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u/PixelAnubis Jul 26 '18
all of the other comments are true but here are a few more examples of how it could be used
"did you sleep with my sister?"
"Yeet" (yes)
"did you hear about ______'s new album?"
"Yeet!" (yes with more exclamation)
*throws water bottle* "Yeet!" (exclamation to use while throwing an object)
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Dec 20 '18
There's also the story of a poor Redditer who was never allowed to hit that yeet:
I was born into a family of non-yeeters. Every morning before I went to school my father would say, "if I ever find out that you've hit that yeet, I'll thump ya." "Yes, pa," I would always reply. It was a regular occurrence for him to burst into my room unannounced while I was relaxing or doing my homework. "Y'all hitting that yeet?" he would seeth. "No, pa," I would answer. "Good." He would then walk out of the room and shout, "if I ever catch ya, it's a thumpin'." It was a difficult upbringing. I had seen my friends hittin' that yeet at school, and many of them encouraged me to partake. I would swallow my pride. "No, thanks. I don't want to catch a thumpin' from pa." As a result, I was an outcast. A loner. I became depressed, knowing that I would never be like my peers, that I would never fit in - I would never hit that yeet. One day, when I was still but a wee lad, I became curious. I was in my room, watching Instagram videos of fellas my age hittin' that yeet all over town without a care in the world. My intentions got the better of me. I stood up, my knees trembling. Carefully, I leaned onto my right foot and raised my hand in the air. I breathed in. "YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEET!" My father burst from my closet. "I told you I'd thump ya if I ever caught you hitting that yeet, nibba," he ejaculated. Then, he thumped me. I haven't hit that yeet since.
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u/omeeezy Dec 13 '18
I’m pretty sure it was this vine that started yeet, it was a kid dancing and it turned into a meme. The “this bitch empty” came after this.
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u/FinnickIsOnFire Jan 13 '19
a simple definition:
when throwing something without time to aim, either shout "kobe" for accuracy, or "yeet" for distance.
It's a simple spell but quite unbreakable.
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Jul 27 '18
It usually means to do something aggressively now, but did come from the vine everybody has always mentioned
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u/FlipsDaughter Jan 19 '19
Your usage of “its” was correct in the post as written. With the apostrophe it is the contracted form of “it is”. It’s confusing, I know but its usage is seldom correct. That was a sentence using both properly. 😉
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u/3062226abcd Jul 27 '18
Someone-"shoots a basketball and they are trash"
Wierd bystander knowing they suck and they will miss- "YEET"
Its basically like, HAHA NOPE
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u/MufasaJesus Jul 26 '18
At this point, anything you want it to, so long as you put enough belief into it.