September 15, 2009
yoink
The term more than likely originated from the Simpsons:
I remember a friend in college discussing how her roommate completely failed to understand how to use the interjection yoink. I’m sure the friend had watched The Simpsons a few times, as anyone my age would have had ample occasion to do, but I wouldn’t have pegged her as a Simpsons fan. And yet here she was, trying to explain a concept that is widely considered to have originated on the show as if speaking the word yoink while stealing were as a natural a thing to do as, say, wincing when nails meet chalkboard or giggling when you watch a dog trip and fall down.
I don’t, however, remember thinking anything was strange about the alleged first yoink, spoken by Homer in the fourth season episode “Duffless.” (Keep in mind that it aired on February 18, 1993, when I was in fifth grade and didn’t know anything and essentially had to let The Simpsons teach me about the world. I kind of just took anything The Simpsons said as gospel and then repeated in an effort to make people think I had a sense of humor.) In the episode, Homer has just managed to withstand thirty days without a beer and decides to celebrate this fact by going to Moe’s.
Even if it didn’t originate, I think there is no doubt that it was popularized by the show.
comments
Leave a Reply
“Larcenous Interjection”
“Fun” fact: I own yoink.org. I also own fishbulb.com (wha?). I used to be a huge Simpsons dork. Yoink still makes me giggle.
I am with you, Jason, yoink will continue to make me giggle until the day I die.
Homer is the Bugs Bunny of our day.
Every Friday around noon when I was in middle school, we had Assembly, which meant we had to sit in the auditorium and watch either Looney Tunes or Charlie Chaplin movies for forty minutes. I think officially it had something to do with there not being room for all the students in the cafeteria at once. But, in retrospect, this was as important a part of our cultural education as most of our classes.
There’s a layer of funny in Bugs Bunny cartoons that makes sense to children, but most of the content is directed at American adults around my parents’ age; by watching those shows over and over, we eventually learned to read that cultural context almost as if it had been our own.
The Simpsons is, similarly, not really a children’s show (it certainly didn’t start as one), and it works similarly now, I think, in teaching young people about the world—both the present-day world and that which existed twenty or thirty years ago. But for obvious reasons it’s reaching a lot more people of all ages, in a lot more places, a lot faster than Bugs Bunny ever could.
Problem is, I don’t remember when’s the last time I watched The Simpsons. That must be why I never seem to have any idea what’s going on.
The past few years have been shaky, but if you ever have the urge Hulu often has a few.
I forgot to mention that I learned about Wagner through Bugs Bunny. Years later when I was watching the Ring Cycle I had a hard time not singing “kill the wabbit.”
I learned how to dress up like a girl — lipstick and a skirt and all — from Bugs.
Footnote to India’s comment (and one of those degree-of-separation things that is of limited interest to a limited audience):
In the Tracey Ullman Show era of The Simpsons, a member of Cooper’s and my band of longtime friends (the so-called Gang of Six) worked on the shorts at Klasky-Csupo along with Wes Archer. They had been roommates and remain friends.
And I have a funny photo of Wes Archer pulling a monkey face at my friend’s birthday party.
See what I mean? Do you care?
Nah, I don’t care.
I associate Wagner with the computer game, myself.
It would scare me, India, if you’d replied, “Really? That is sooooo interesting and sooooo cool.”
My instincts remain sound.
Phew.
I always thought the Simpsons yoink was a reference to/play on Shaggy from Scooby-Doo saying “YOIKS!”
That was “zoinks” not “yoinks.”