Yakka

noun, verb, slang

noun, verb, slang ·Uncommon ·College level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    Work. Australia, uncountable

    "The demand for work and abortion shows that feminists have been coopted by the wimps, whose ideal is the single mother yoked to tough yakka; for it frees them to drift between bedrooms and bathhouses."

  2. 2
    a Sikh living in the Sikh diaspora, especially one from the West India, North, South-Asia, derogatory, slang, sometimes
Verb
  1. 1
    To work. Australia

Antonyms

All antonyms

Example

More examples

"The demand for work and abortion shows that feminists have been coopted by the wimps, whose ideal is the single mother yoked to tough yakka; for it frees them to drift between bedrooms and bathhouses."

Etymology

Etymology 1

From Yagara yaga (“work”).

Etymology 2

From Punjabi ਯੱਕਾ (yakkā), usually referring to an ace (a type of playing card) or a horse-drawn cart, but can also be translated into the English expletive fuck. However, the slang usage of the term is said to be a corruption of Yankee.

Related phrases

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.