Word.ws English Dictionary

yes and

yes and verb: to go along with what is offered, especially in a performative context, and to accept and expand upon it; to go with the flow; to take it in stride.

Verb

yes and (third-person singular simple present yes ands, present participle yes anding, simple past and past participle yes anded)

  1. To go along with what is offered, especially in a performative context, and to accept and expand upon it; to go with the flow; to take it in stride.
    • If Lord Buckley made standup courageous, then Lenny Bruce “yes anded” that and ushered in standup for a new age2011, Margaret Hicks, Chicago Comedy: A Fairly Serious History

Forms of yes and

third-person singular presentyes ands
present participleyes anding
past participleyes anded
pastyes anded

Origin of yes and

From a well-known rule in improv acting, wherein improvised lines must (figuratively) be answered with yes and... in order to continue the scene.

Questions about yes and

What does yes and mean?
Yes and means to go along with what is offered, especially in a performative context, and to accept and expand upon it; to go with the flow; to take it in stride.
What part of speech is yes and?
Yes and is a verb.
What is the past tense of yes and?
The past tense of yes and is yes anded.

Words near yes and in the dictionary

  1. yerth
  2. Yerushalmi
  3. Yerxa
  4. yery
  5. yes
  6. yes and
  7. yes and amen
  8. yes and no
  9. yes anded
  10. yes anding
  11. yes ands

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: yes and (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:

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