Yurr / Yerr

About

YURR / YERR is a slang expression with various uses and meanings over the past two decades. The use of yerr and yurr has been mostly geo-located to the New York region of the United States, but early definitions for the word place its early use around the western United Kingdom as well. Typically, yurr is used as a form of greeting, similar to "what's up," while yerr is mostly a different spelling but also used to get someone's attention. Each of them is also commonly used interchangeably with "yes" or "yeah" to show agreement.

Origin

Though there are many different origins for yurr and yerr given, the most common threads between them are that it has to do with New York culture, possibly a play on the expression "you heard," making it a word used mostly at the end of sentences or preceding statements. According to Urban Dictionary, "YERR" is identified as originating first, with a definition being put up on September 8th, 2003, by user tec.^[1] Although the meaning is slightly different from today's usage, it's still quite similar (shown below).

Likewise, the earliest definition for YURR comes from Urban Dictionary user yourfavems^[2] on September 13th, 2017, with the definition being closer aligned to 2022 usage, while still being similar to the original usage of 2003 (shown below).

Spread

The slang terms began to see increased usage online in 2019, particularly catching on throughout 2020. Around this time, "yurr" was the most prevalent variation, with "yerr" and "ya heard" combined being less than half of the search volume as "yurr," according to Google Trends.^[3]

With TikTok growing in users during the early 2020s, yurr started to bleed into the platform, cementing its place as the dominant of the two phrases and getting used at the beginning of various videos to show the person is either from New York or annoying in context, as can be seen in the video by TikToker trellevision^[4] on April 28th, 2022 (shown below).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References