Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, September 6, 1995 TAG: 9509070007
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DANIEL RUBIN KNIGHT-RIDDER/TRIBUNE
DATELINE: PHILADELPHIA LENGTH: Medium
The 1996 edition of The Official Scrabble Players Dictionary will recognize a word that's been rattling off Philly rowhouses for generations.
Four points for the Y, one point for the O.
Yo!
Or actually, ``yo.'' (There are no exclamation points in Scrabble.)
It takes some time for a word to make it from the streets into one of the five standard desk dictionaries that Scrabble guide compilers rely on to determine what flies on the gameboard.
The word ``yo'' - with roots that reach back to the 15th century - finally made it into Merriam Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, Tenth Edition, in 1993.
``Yo'': ``used esp. to call attention, to indicate attentiveness, or to express affirmation.''
``I guess it's a good thing. Yeah, it's all right,'' said Mark Williams, manager of Rocky's Gym in Philadelphia, when told of the new status for ``yo.'' ``We say that a lot around here.''
He's not that big a Scrabble player, however, so he turned to one of the gym's regulars for help.
``Hey, Kenny, you play Scrabble?
``Scramble?''
The hardcore players also were jazzed about the rules change, although more for strategy than sentiment. ``Any extra word is just more opportunity for scoring,'' said Phyllis Patukus, co-director of a National Scrabble Association Club based in Chester County, Pa.
Two-letter additions are particularly welcome, she said. While living-room Scrabblers play perpendicularly, hooking a word onto one letter it shares with an existing word, she plays in parallel, forming several two-letter words at a time. ``Yo,'' she said, happily joins ``aa,'' ``ka'' and ``ut.''
Frederick Mish, Merriam Webster's editor-in-chief, said his editors in Springfield, Mass., find new words by spending at least an hour a day reading anything they can get their hands on - out-of-town newspapers, special-interest magazines, popular newsweeklies. They list each contender on a 3-by-5 slip of paper, then select the best and most popular.
Mish said ``yo'' was first noted in a Middle English manuscript from around 1420 in which a man is calling off his dogs:
``Yaw there! Seek him no more.''
It resurfaced twice more that century, once in the 18th and four times in the 19th, including this from Dickens' ``A Tale of Two Cities,'' the word by then transformed into modern English:
``Yo there! Stand! I shall fire.''
Not until the 1980s did Mish's editors come across the word regularly.
Had they opened the Philadelphia Daily News, they would have found a feature section by that name.
The Oxford Dictionary of New Words recognized ``yo'' in 1991, saying: ``Among young people, (especially in the U.S.): an exclamation used in greeting or to express excitement etc., and associated particularly with Rap and Hip Hop culture; hey!''
Hey, yourself.
They go on to say that ``yo'' has been an attention-getter, particularly to warn of danger, since the 15th century, and the root of the sailor's ``yo-ho-ho.'' Black street slang revived ``yo'' in the late '70s, the dictionary states, and it passed through music to white youths in the '80s.
Its popularity in both the United States and the United Kingdom can be attributed in part, the dictionary states, to ``The Simpsons'' and ``a number of films featuring Sylvester Stallone.''
``Yo'' stirred an old rivalry Aug. 4, 1993, when the New York Times' Michael Kaufman wrote that ``yo'' was so rooted in New York that it should be made part of the city seal.
``There are some who, citing the cries of Sylvester Stallone in the Rocky movies, say `yo' originated in Philadelphia. Perhaps. Then again Babe Ruth once played for Boston. Like him, `yo' got big in New York.''
Among the piece's many protesters was Ernest Paolino of New Brunswick, N.J.
``As a displaced Philadelphian, I feel duty-bound to defend the honor of the city of my birth,'' he wrote to the Times. ``Despite the attempt to co-opt `yo' for New York, the term originated in Philadelphia, or more accurately, South Philadelphia.
``In the 1930s a large proportion of the residents of South Philadelphia were Italian immigrants, mostly from the Campania region of southern Italy, the principal city of which was Naples.
``In the Neopolitan dialect, `guaglione' (pronounced guahl-YO-nay) signified a young man. The chiefly unlettered immigrants shortened that to `guahl-YO,' which was pronounced whal-YO. That was inevitably further shortened to ``yo.'' The common greeting among young Italian American males was `Hey, whal-YO!' and then simply `Yo!' And so it remains today.''
Yo, yourself.
by CNB