Yo-ho-ho
intj ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 A cry associated with pirates and seafaring, originally a repetitive chant intended to synchronize workers performing some collective physical labour, such as hauling on a rope.
"How happy, my comrades, how happy are we, / While drawing fish from the dark rolling sea, / While drawing fish from the dark rolling sea. / Yo ho, yo ho, yo ho, ho, ho!"
Synonyms
All synonymsExample
More examples"Seventeen men on the dead man's chest, yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!"
Etymology
The term was popularized by a (fictional) pirate shanty in the novel Treasure Island (1883) by Scottish writer Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894) – see the quotation – but appears in earlier songs of sailors. The term is possibly a variant of yo-he-ho, apparently a short form of yo-heave-ho (“a repetitive call made to synchronize workers performing some collective physical labour, such as hauling on a rope”).
More for "yo-ho-ho"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.