# yiff

> English word · Interjection · IPA /jɪf/ · frequency rank #91,165

## Definitions
1. Onomatopeia representing the bark of a fox (especially while mating).
2. Used to express happiness or to state that something is sexually appealing.

## Etymology
Yiff was part of a range of onomatopoeic words from a pseudolanguage called Foxish used by the furry role-playing community, ostensibly created by a user named LittleFox or Foxen around 1990. Other terms used by this community included yip, yerf, yaff, yarf, growf, and growlf. Yiff originally meant yes or an exuberant hello. According to LittleFox, the sexual connotations of yiff were influenced by yipp (derived from yip), which originally held these sexual connotations. By 1992, yiff had been assigned a meaning of a sexual proposition, and in modern use within the furry subculture, yiff exclusively refers either to sex between anthropomorphic animals, or pornographic depictions thereof.

## Source
Compiled from Wiktionary via kaikki.org (CC BY-SA). Data vintage: 2026-05-06.
Canonical page: https://plainspell.com/en/word/yiff