- This article is about the fictional species. For the search engine, see Yahoo!. For the actor, see Yahoo Serious.
In Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift, a yahoo is a vile and savage creature, filthy and with unpleasant habits, resembling human beings far too closely for the liking of Lemuel Gulliver, who finds the calm and rational society of the Houyhnhnms far preferable. Hence the term "yahoo" has become a general term of insult, much along the lines of "cretin". The creators of the Yahoo! search engine chose its name at least partly on account of the word's meaning from Gulliver's Travels.
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