Yeet is one of the internet’s newest and least understood words. It’s used everywhere, seemingly without any form of context. But words have to mean something, and yeet does have a few precise meanings.
Yeet Has Two Distinct Definitions
At face value, yeet looks like a nonsense internet word that’s used without any concrete definition or context. It’s pasted on memes for seemingly no reason, and that one friend who spends too much time on Reddit can’t seem to stop nonsensically ad-libbing it.
For most uses of yeet, what you see is what you get. It’s just some word that sounds funny and expressive. It’s usually used in place of affirmative words like “boo-yeah,” but it’s sometimes used in place of regular verbs to bring humor out of everyday actions (like dancing, running, or tumbling down a hill).
But yeet isn’t actually a nonsense word, that’s just how most people use it. Yeet has a concrete definition: to forcefully throw an object with the confidence and authority of a god. You can see this definition at work in some memes and videos, and you can even use it in your everyday life.
When you’re done eating breakfast, you can yeet the eggy mess across the kitchen and into the trash. When you’re hungry as a horse, you can yeet your body into an Arby’s like a ragdoll. While performing these actions, you should yell “YEET,” because that’s what everybody in-the-know does.
So yeet is a word that means “to throw,” and it can be used as an exclamation while throwing something. It’s also used as a nonsense word, usually to add humor to an action or verbal response. But where did yeet come from, and why does it have two separate definitions?
Yeet Lore and Etymology
It’s hard to pinpoint exactly when yeet became a word, but its meaning and usage seems to stem from 2000’s hip-hop.
In an Urban Dictionary entry from 2008, a man named Bubba Johnson defines yeet as an exclamation used when throwing an object in the air, especially “in basketball when someone has shot a three-pointer that they are sure will go in the hoop.”
