yack
/jæk/noun, verb
yack is a noun meaning “Alternative form of yak (“chatter; talk”)” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled Y-A-C-K and has one syllable, and it appears about once in every 15 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of yack is yacks.
What does yack mean?
noun
- 1
Alternative form of yak (“chatter; talk”).
- 2
obsoleteAn oak.
If 't ash tree buds before 't yack, […]
- 3
UKobsoleteA watch (timepiece).
verb
- 1
Alternative form of yak (“talk; vomit”).
I moved to another carriage on the train because the first one was full of people yacking on mobile phones.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you pronounce yack?
- /jæk/
As a noun (“An oak”): /jak/.
Yack has one syllable (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: En-au-yack.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of yack
- yacks plural, present, singular, he/she/it
- yacking participle, present
- yacked participle, past
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is yack?
Yack appears about once in every 15 million words in written English, the 115,751st most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Words people confuse with yack
Sounds like: yak (Wiktionary's homophone list; some hold only in some accents).
Sources: English Wiktionary (homophones, alternative spellings).