Word.ws English Dictionary

Yerkish

/ˈjɜːrkɪʃ/

Yerkish proper noun: an artificial language of lexigrams developed for use by non-human primates.

Proper noun

Yerkish

  1. An artificial language of lexigrams developed for use by non-human primates.
    • Kanzi's ability to ‘speak’ in Yerkish and understand English is impressive.2022, Morten H. Christiansen, Nick Chater, chapter 8, in The Language Game […] , →ISBN

Origin of Yerkish

From Yerkes + -ish, after Robert M. Yerkes, the founder of the laboratory within which the lexigrams were first used.

Questions about Yerkish

What does Yerkish mean?
Yerkish means an artificial language of lexigrams developed for use by non-human primates.
What part of speech is Yerkish?
Yerkish is a proper noun.
How do you pronounce Yerkish?
Yerkish is pronounced /ˈjɜːrkɪʃ/.

Words near Yerkish in the dictionary

  1. yerk
  2. yerked
  3. Yerkes
  4. Yerkes-Dodson law
  5. yerking
  6. Yerkish
  7. yerks
  8. yermic
  9. yermosol
  10. yermosols
  11. yermulke

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Yerkish (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-Yerkish.wav.

Cite this entry: “Yerkish.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/yerkish. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.