Yell

How to spell yell

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce yell

What does yell mean?

1. verbTo shout loudly, often in anger, excitement, or to get attention.
2. nounA loud, sharp cry or shout.

Yell in a sentence

• verb

  He had to yell across the noisy warehouse to be heard.

• noun

  She gave a sudden yell when the cold water hit her.

• verb

  The coach would yell instructions from the touchline.

• noun

  A triumphant yell went up from the crowd at the final whistle.

Where does yell come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word descends from the Old English verb gellan, also spelled giellan, which meant to sound loudly, to shout, or to cry out, and which was used of both human cries and the harsh calls of birds. It belongs to a family of Germanic words built on a root that imitated a loud, ringing sound, and it is closely related to the same source that gives us the bird name 'nightingale', literally the night singer. The hard initial sound softened over the centuries into the modern 'y', and the spelling settled into its simple four-letter form by the late medieval period. Because the word is so short and phonetically regular, it has stayed remarkably stable; the only mild trap is remembering the doubled 'l' at the end. It functions as both a verb and a noun in modern English, and its sense has narrowed over time from any loud cry to a sharp, forceful shout.

How the word is built

• yell (a single Old English root verb, gellan: to sound loudly); no prefix or suffix