Y
Y 1. The electronic symbol for admittance - the inverse of impedance. 2. Abbreviation for luminance (black & white) video signal. 3. Chemical symbol for yttrium - my absolute favorite element, next to ytterbium.
Y2k (year two thousand)
yackety-yack Prolonged, sometimes senseless talk. [AHD] After yack: a snapping sound; engaged in trivial or unduly persistent talk or conversation; chatter. (Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, 5th ed.)
yada-yada Trivial, tedious, or meaningless talk or writing; chatter. (Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, 5th ed.) [And you thought Seinfeld writers made this up!]
YAG (yttrium-aluminum-garnet) A type of solid-state laser. Compare with YIG.
Yagi antenna Shortened form of Yagi-Uda antenna, a linear end-fire array consisting of a driven element, a reflector element, and one or more director elements -- your basic TV antenna. [named after Hidetsugu Yagi (1886-1976), laboratory director of Shintaro Uda, professor at Tohoku University in Sendai, Japan.]
yahoo A crude or brutish person; a boor. [And you thought it was a search engine.]
y'allternative "Music known most commonly as 'country rock' which is a hybrid of modern alternative rock and country music." -- Pseudodictionary.com
yang-qin Musical Instrument. A Chinese hammered dulcimer.
yapped Book jargon Refers to the edge of the cover of a book bound in paper or other soft material. Yapped edges are not flush with the pages but extend beyond the edges of the book making them fragile.
yarr To growl or snarl like a dog. [Lynch]
yaw 1. Nautical To swerve off course momentarily or temporarily: The ship yawed as the heavy wave struck abeam. 2. To turn about the vertical axis. Used of an aircraft, spacecraft, or projectile. 3. To move unsteadily; weave. [AHD]
yawp 1. To utter a sharp cry; yelp. 2. To talk loudly, raucously, or coarsely. [AHD]
y-axis The vertical axis of a two-dimensional Cartesian coordinate system, or one of three axes in a three-dimensional Cartesian coordinate system. [AHD]
YaYa Music. 1. What came before music (YaYa). 2. Sittin' here LaLa ... waitin' for my YaYa. 3. The chemistry between musicians and the audience.
YB (yottabyte) The number of bytes represented by 2 raised to the 80th power, i.e., 1,208,925,819,614,629,174,706,176 bytes.
Y/C video See S-video.
Y-connector or Y-cord A three-wire circuit that is star connected. Also spelled wye-connector. It is okay to use a Y-connector to split an audio signal from an output to drive two inputs; it is not okay to use a Y-connector to try and sum or mix two signals together to drive one input. For details, see the RaneNote Why Not Wye?
y-cut Oscillators. A method of cutting a quartz plate for an oscillator, with the y-axis of the crystal perpendicular to the faces of the plate. Contrast with x-cut.
YDG (young digital guy) As opposed to an OAG.
Yellow Book Nickname for the Philips and Sony's ECMA-130 standard document that defines the format for CD-ROM (compact disc-read only memory) discs; available only to licensees. Compare with Red Book and Green Book.
yelp To utter a short, sharp bark or cry. [AHD]
yield The number of devices that work as planned, specified as a percentage of the total number actually fabricated. Normally used to quantify a run of integrated circuits.
yield strength Materials Science. The magnitude of mechanical stress at which a material will begin to deform.
YIG (yttrium-iron-garnet) A crystalline material used in microwave devices. Compare with YAG. [Don't confuse your 'yag-yig' with your 'ying-yang.']
Y/N Software program "yes/no" response prompt. A "Y" or "N" keystroke is expected.
Ynysddu Welsh district and home to Penny & Giles.
yob Chiefly British. Backward spelling of "boy" used to mean an uncouth, loutish, ignorant youth or man; especially one given to violent or aggressive behavior. [OED] A crowd of yelling yobs.
yoctosecond Abbr. ys or ysec One septillionth (10-24) of a second.
yodel Music. To sing so that the voice fluctuates rapidly between the normal chest voice and a falsetto. [AHD]
yoicks Used as a hunting cry to urge hounds after a fox. [AHD]
yoke 1. Any magnetic core interconnection material. 2. The deflection windings of a CRT. 3. A series of two or more magnetic recording heads fastened securely together for playing or recording on more than one track simultaneously. [AHD]
yottahertz Abbr. YHz One septillion (1024) hertz.
Young's modulus Abbr. E (Also know as elastic modulus.) Materials. A measure of the stiffness of a given material. "For a solid, it is the ratio of the longitudinal stress to the longitudinal stain in the same direction, when a rod of the material is stretched by a small amount along its axis and allowed to contract freely transverse to the axis." [Morfey]
Young, Thomas (1773-1829) British scientist best known for his modulus.
Young waves Materials. Longitudinal waves that propagate in a uniform bar of solid material with stress-free sides. [Morfey]
YRB (Yellow Rat Bastard) Website, magazine, clothes, music, newsletter, all for the ultra hip, from NYC, of course. Contains adult content. Check it out.
Yttrium See definition three for "Y" above.
yule-hole The last hole to which a man can stretch his belt at a Christmas feast. [Kacirk]
YUV video The coding process used in CD-I in which the luminance signal (Y) is recorded at full bandwidth on each line and chroma values (U and V) are recorded at half bandwidth on alternate lines.
YUX Musical Instruments. Model number prefix for Yamaha upright pianos.
