a late-developing letter in English. Called ipsilon in German, upsilon in Greek, the English name is of obscure origin.
The sound at the beginning of yard, yes, yield, etc. is from Old English words with initial g- as in got and y- as in yet, which were considered the same sound and often transcribed as Ȝ, known as yogh. The system was altered by French scribes, who brought over the continental use of -g- and from the early 1200s used -y- and sometimes -gh- to replace Ȝ.
The French also tended to substitute -y- for -i-, especially before -u-, -n-, or -m-, or at the end of words, to avoid confusion in reading (see U), which might also partly explain this tendency in Middle English. As short for YMCA, etc., by 1915.
perfective prefix, in yclept, etc.; a deliberate archaism, introduced by Spenser and his imitators, representing an authentic Middle English prefix y-, earlier i-, from Old English ge-, originally meaning "with, together" but later a completive or perfective element, from Proto-Germanic *ga- "together, with" (also a collective and intensive prefix), from PIE *kom "beside, near, by, with" (cognate with Sanskrit ja-, Latin com-, cum-; see com-). It is still living in German and Dutch ge-, and survives, disguised, in some English words (such as alike, aware, handiwork).
Among hundreds of Middle English words it formed are yfallen, yhacked ("completely hacked," probably now again useful), yknow, ymarried, ywrought.
suffix indicating state, condition, or quality; also activity or the result of it (as in victory, history, etc.), via Anglo-French and Old French -é, from Latin -ia, Greek -ia, from PIE *-a-, suffix forming abstract or collective nouns. It is etymologically identical with -ia and the second element in -cy, -ery, -logy, etc.
suffix in pet proper names (such as Johnny, Kitty), first recorded in Scottish c. 1400; according to OED it became frequent in English 15c.-16c. Extension to surnames seems to date from c. 1940. Use with common nouns seems to have begun in Scottish with laddie (1546) and become popular in English due to Burns' poems, but the same formation appears to be represented much earlier in baby and puppy.
adjective suffix, "full of or characterized by," from Old English -ig, from Proto-Germanic *-iga- (source also of Dutch, Danish, German -ig, Gothic -egs), from PIE -(i)ko-, adjectival suffix, cognate with elements in Greek -ikos, Latin -icus (see -ic).
Originally added to nouns in Old English; it was used from 13c. with verbs, and by 15c. with other adjectives (for example crispy).
Variant forms in -y for short, common adjectives (vasty, hugy) helped poets keep step with classical feet when the grammatically empty but metrically useful -e dropped off such words in late Middle English. To replace it, by Elizabethan times, verse-writers had adapted to -y forms, and often it was done artfully, as in Sackville's "The wide waste places, and the hugy plain." Simple huge plain would have been a metrical balk.
After Coleridge's criticism of the -y forms as archaic artifice, poets gave up stilly (Moore probably was last to get away with it, with "Oft in the Stilly Night"), paly (which Keats and Coleridge himself had used) and the rest. Jespersen ("Modern English Grammar," 1954) also lists bleaky (Dryden), bluey, greeny, and other color words, lanky, plumpy, stouty, and the slang rummy. Vasty survived, he said, only in imitation of Shakespeare; cooly and moisty (Chaucer, hence Spenser) he regarded as fully obsolete. But in a few cases he notes (haughty, dusky) they seem to have supplanted the shorter forms.
1550s, yeaghe "a light, fast-sailing ship," from Norwegian jaght or early Dutch jaght, both from Middle Low German jacht, shortened form of jachtschip "fast pirate ship," literally "ship for chasing," from jacht "chase," from jagen "to chase, hunt," from Old High German jagon, from Proto-Germanic *yago-, from PIE root *yek- (2) "to hunt" (source also of Hittite ekt- "hunting net"). Related: Yachting; yachtsman.
also yak, "to talk, to chatter," 1950, slang, probably short for yackety-yacking "talk" (1947), probably echoic (compare Australian slang yacker "talk, conversation," 1882). Related: Yacked; yacking.
"and so on," 1990s, of echoic origin (compare yatata "talk idly, chatter," 1940s; and yatter "to talk incessantly or idly," 1825).
exclamation of defiance or dismissal, from 1812. Extended form yah-boo by 1910.
