Definitions

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • interjection A nonce word, now associated with pirates and seafaring.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From the Robert Louis Stevenson novel Treasure Island (1883) where it is followed by "and a bottle of rum" in a supposed pirate chantey.

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Examples

  • It seeks the yo-ho-ho, and the spoils of land and sea.

    The Bushman Way of Tracking God PhD Bradford Keeney 2010

  • Alistair Beaton's script is not so much a play as a series of sketches; Anthony Neilson's production is remorselessly larky, with lots of arch posturing and yo-ho-ho shantying.

    Caledonia; The Gospel at Colonus; Vieux Carré 2010

  • All very yo-ho-ho in the morning light it was too, with birds screeching about over by the ships, very Robert Louis indeed as I gazed down on the street, hoping to catch a glimpse of a one legged man or to musket my way to a few of those pieces of eight.

    [growing old gracefully] and the problem of seagulls 2009

  • “You get to say, ‘Fifteen men on the dead man’s chest, yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum.”

    Teddy Roosevelt and the Treasure of Ursa Major Kennedy Center 2008

  • “You get to say, ‘Fifteen men on the dead man’s chest, yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum.”

    Teddy Roosevelt and the Treasure of Ursa Major Kennedy Center 2008

  • “You get to say, ‘Fifteen men on the dead man’s chest, yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum.”

    Teddy Roosevelt and the Treasure of Ursa Major Kennedy Center 2008

  • As it turns out, Jolly Roger is back to collect his "sixteen heads for a dead man's chest/yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum" -- and he intends to cull these heads from the descendants of the crewmates who mutinied him to death three hundred years ago.

    July 11th, 2005 2005

  • June 4th, 2006 at 10:53 pm yeah the Humble Pie, Small Faces, and Buffalo Springfield clips are rockin my “yo-ho-ho” world.

    Firedoglake » Late Nite FDL: Mining for YouTube Gold 2006

  • Come shake a leg, lads, all O. Wi 'a yo-ho-ho and a rumbelow

    Black Bartlemy's Treasure Jeffery Farnol 1915

  • I'd made myself a present of a white flannel suit and a Willie Collier yachtin 'cap, and if there'd been an orchestra down front I could have done a yo-ho-ho baritone solo right off the reel.

    Shorty McCabe Sewell Ford 1907

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