Information about Yes

Yes is a common English word indicating agreement. It is the opposite of no. In English, "yes" is also used to answer a negative question or statement, "Yes" is similar in meaning to "yeah" and "yea," both casual variants of the term. The compound word yes-man is a sycophant or a toady. Famous uses of "yes" in literature and art occur in James Joyce's Ulysses and in Yoko Ono's large canvas which contains the word "Yes".

Notes on usage

In English, "yes" is also used to answer a negative question or statement; an example of "yes" used to disagree with a question or statement is:
The questions "You don’t want it, do you?" and "Don’t you want it?" can be answered by "yes" if the respondent does want the item, and "no" if he or she does not. However, other words are used when the answer needs to be clearly delineated, as in "Of course I want it," or "No, not at all." It can be confusing when someone asks a question that only contains a negative statement. For example, "You don't want it?" can be answered "yes" or "no" and could be confused as meaning either yes or no. Many languages use a different word for this purpose. For example, German has "" for this purpose (rather than ""), French uses "si" (rather than "oui") and the mainland Scandinavian languages (Danish, Swedish and Norwegian) use "jo" ("jau" in Nynorsk).

"Yes" is similar in meaning to "yeah" and "yea," both casual variants that are probably older than "yes."[1]

An example of a language that does not have yes or no is Irish. In it, to indicate a positive or negate response to a question, the verb of the question is repeated in either the positive or negative form. For example (verb underlined):

"An bhfaca tú an timpiste?" ("Did you see the accident?")

"Chonaic." ("Saw.")

:or

"Ní fhaca." ("Did not see.")

It is sometimes erroneously thought that Sea ("is so") and Ní hea ("is not so") mean "yes" and "no", but in fact they can only be used in response to to question An ea? ("is it so?").

This practice has influenced the form of English spoken in Ireland, often called Hiberno-English, where yes and no are used more infrequently than in other forms of English. The same question would often be answered, "I do" or "I don't" in substitute or combination to yes or no.

Famous yeses

Perhaps the most famous "yes" in literature comes from Molly Bloom's soliloquy, which is the concluding "Penelope" chapter in James Joyce's Ulysses.^[1]. In this chapter, Joyce uses Molly Bloom's "yes" as a sort of refrain in a very long stream of consciousness sentence. The chapter both begins,

Yes because he never did a thing like that before as ask to get his breakfast in bed with a couple of eggs since the CITY ARMS hotel. . .

and ends:

. . . yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.

with the word yes.

When John Lennon met Yoko Ono, one of the first works by Ono that captured Lennon's attention was a large canvas which viewers were invited to inspect by a glass, through which they could read the single word "Yes" written on it. ^[2]

Francis Pharcellus Church wrote a famous editorial called Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus, affirming at least the spiritual existence of Santa Claus to a doubting child. Portions of Church's text are often circulated by other newspapers each Christmas.

Roger Fisher and Bruce Patton wrote a famous self-help book about negotiation and salesmanship called Getting to YES. This book has sold more than 2 million copies and been translated into 20 languages. By contrast, a yes-man is a sycophant or a toady; this word is used in business circles to identify people who enthusiastically endorse everything their superiors propose in order to curry favor with them. The turn of phrase is an old one; in Latin, a toady was called babaecalus, someone who cried "Bravo" (Latin babae) to everything their superior did.^[3] But Friedrich Nietzsche's Zarathustra calls himself a yes-sayer, with somewhat more positive intent:

I, however, am a blesser and a Yes-sayer, if you be but around me, you pure, you luminous heaven! you abyss of light!- into all abysses do I then carry my beneficent Yes-saying.

A blesser have I become and a Yes-sayer: and therefore strove I long and was a striver, that I might one day get my hands free for blessing.^[4]

References

See also

• Positive
• Affirmative
• Aye (yes)