'Thy Auld Damn'd Elbow Yeuks Wi' Joy'

It’s the sheer unembarrassed redundancy of English I love. We have a dozen ways or more to say everything. Synonyms are never scrupulously identical, and each encourages us to refine our expression and avoid the lazy articulation of the herd. Even so childishly slangy a word as yuck carries a load of precise choices, whereas I thought of it only as a statement of disgust, as in “Spinach! Yuck!” While reading in John Florio’s translation of Montaigne (1603), the first in English, I found this: “He would . . . make a whippe to yarke and lash, as cunningly as any Carter in France.” Spelling and meaning were still fluid. A century and a half later, Dr. Johnson in his Dictionary (1755) defines the word simply as “itch” and roots it in Dutch.

The OED gives eleven primary definitions for yuck as noun, verb, interjection and adjective, and numerous sub-definitions for each. The contemporary sense dates only from 1966: “an expression of strong distaste or disgust.” The Dictionary records such uses as “a fool; a boor; anyone disliked or despised” (used by Raymond Chandler); “to vomit”; a variation of yoke; “to stitch together the parts of a boot or shoe”; “to laugh loudly or uproariously, esp. in an exaggerated or contrived fashion” (cited to Groucho Marx); “to retch, hiccup, sob, or make any similar noise produced in the throat. Also occasionally with up: to cough up.” Also, Johnson’s sense, “to itch,” identified as “Scottish and northern dialect,” citing Robert Burns: “Ah! Nick . . . Thy auld damned elbow yeuks wi’ joy, / And hellish pleasure,” from his “Poem on Life”:

 

“Poor man the flie, aft bizzes bye,

And aft as chance he comes thee nigh,

Thy auld damn’d elbow yeuks wi’ joy,

And hellish pleasure;

Already in thy fancy's eye,

Thy sicker treasure.”

 

Burns’ poem concludes:

 

“But lest you think I am uncivil,

To plague you with this draunting drivel,

Abjuring a’ intentions evil,

I quat my pen:

The Lord preserve us frae the devil!

Amen! Amen!’

The language we are born into strongly suggests we consider what we are trying to say.