What is the history and regional dispersion of the affirmative "yup"?

Question

Living in the Pacific Northwest, a person I'm close to frequently uses this word instead of the more common "yep" or "yeah". As I haven't heard it regularly from others and she has Southern American roots, I wondered what the source of this word is and what geographic regions it's most common.

My limited searching of several dictionaries and some Google searches gave a variety of origin years ranging from the early 1900s to the 1980s. None of them cited this first usage and I was unable to find information on on regional distribution at a sub-national level; apparently this is primarily an Americanism, though this was not well cited either.

user66974 · Accepted Answer

The following sources suggest its origin (1906) as an variant of yep which is used mainly in  the west part of the U.S.A.

Yup:

form of yeah as an isolated or emphatic utterance, with p representing closing of the lips, creating, in effect, an unreleased labial stop (and perhaps also lowering the vowel); compare the parallel use of p in nope.

(Dictionary.com)

Yep vs yup:

The difference is one of intonation and accent, not any difference in meaning.  Originally, the two spellings would have stemmed from regionalisms, "yep" in the East and Southern USA, "yup" in the West.

(Quora.com)

Yup:

The Oxford English Dictionary places the first use of yeah in 1905, one year before yup. Although the first quotation for yup comes from a magazine article, the first quotation for yeah is from an academic journal on American regional dialects.
  It's likely both words were in use before they showed up in print, so the best presumption we can make is that yeah and yup appeared around the same time.

Here's the timeline:

Yep, 1891 (first appeared as a quotation in Harper's Magazine)
  Yeah, 1905 (first described in Dialect Notes)
  Yup, 1906 (first appeared as a quotation in Century Magazine)

(www.visualthesaurus.com)

Hugo · Answer

Here's the US distribution of yup, yep, yeah and yea according to the great American word mapper: "Where the top 100,000 words are used the most, as seen through Twitter data".

We can see yup is most popular in the north, north-east, but also Texas and the mid-west.

Of these four, yeah is most popular in the Pacific north-west.

Kim · Answer

Growing up in the 80’s in Chicago Yup was a derogatory way to agree disrespectfully to a teacher or one you disliked...often it was said Yuuuup! to emphasize the disdain one felt for the receiver, yet attempting to agree.  We were encouraged to use yes if we wanted to show respect and manners.  My husband grew up in the 70’s and does not recall using Yup among his friends and in school. We grew up a few miles from each other and different decades of course. I am curious if anyone else experienced something similar?
I do not recall yep having the same stigma. Yep came later in my life and to us it seems like a casual way to say yes to a close friend.

What is the history and regional dispersion of the affirmative "yup"?

3 Answers

Add your own answers!

Ask a Question