Yup

How to spell yup

3 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce yup

What does yup mean?

1. interjectionAn informal, casual way of saying yes or expressing agreement.

Yup in a sentence

• He gave a quick yup and signed the delivery form.

• When asked if the coffee was ready, she just said yup.

Where does yup come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Yup is a casual American respelling of the affirmative 'yes', and it grew out of the way many speakers cut the word short with a sharp closing sound rather than the long hiss of the final 's'. 'Yes' itself descends from Old English 'gese' or 'gise', which combined a word related to 'yea' with a form of 'be', roughly meaning 'so be it'. Through everyday speech the relaxed forms 'yep' and 'yup' appeared in print in nineteenth and early twentieth century America, written to capture that abrupt, clipped delivery where the mouth snaps shut on a quiet 'p' sound. The spelling deliberately ends in 'p' to signal that closed-lip stop, which is why it looks nothing like the parent word. It remains squarely informal, at home in casual conversation and friendly writing rather than formal documents.

How the word is built

• yup (informal variant of 'yep', itself a clipped, hard-stopped pronunciation of 'yes')