Yank: v.i.:
masturbate. It is important to establish whether you will be the yanker or the yankee, though both is common practice.

Yank: n.:
typical foreign honorific for "American", awarded in recognition of their notorious self-sufficiency.

Yard sale: n.:
grassroots mercantilism.

Ye: article:
"the." An illiterate affectation by shops that want to appear old-fashioned or "quaint."

Year: n.:
a period of length 365 days, unless the year's number is divisible by 4, when the length is 366 days, unless the year is divisible by 100, when the length is 365 days, unless the year is divisible by 400, when the length is 366 days, unless the year is divisible by 4000 . . . .

Yeast: n.:

• polite word for fungus.
  Possibly the longest-domesticated organism, it gives us bread, beer and wine, not to mention a thriving practice of quackery. For the former, we can forgive the last.
  
• that transformative substance which invests pap and yields manna.

Yellow: adj.:

1. the color associated with cowardice.
   
2. the color associated with journalism.
   
3. the color considered brightest and most cheerful.

Yellow journalism: n.:
micturochrome reportage.

Yellow Pages: trade mark:
yellow journalism of the directory industry.

Yellow peril: n.:
an image very evocative to a man with prostatitis; enuresis.

Yellow streak: n.:
oriental exhibitionism.

Yes: adv.:
the most dangerous single word in the English language, and the most valuable.

Yew: n.:
a tree used to make Robin Hood's bow for fighting Prince John and for making a magic arrow for fighting breast cancer.

Yippie: n.:
one of a group of left-fringe activists of the 1960s.
There are varying accounts as to the origin of their name: one school holds that they were named for their similarity to the obnoxious "yip-py" little dogs that dowagers and single women go in for; others maintain it came from their propensity to get stoned and wander around going "Yippee!" at the slightest provocation.

You: pronoun:
I. "You can't be expected to . . . ."

"You can't think straight": phrase:
You don't think like me.

Young: adj.:
invulnerable, omniscient, supremely important, in the eyes of the young.

Youth: n.:

1. a property which the young strive to disguise and the old strive to project.
   
   1. a beatific state wasted on the young;
      
   2. Paradise Lost to the middle-aged;
      
   3. the commodity most squandered by the old in time of war.
2. in Presidential politics, any age below that of retirement.

Yuppie: acronym:
from Young Upward(-ly mobile) Professional.
One of a class bearing much the same relation to captains of industry as a remora to a shark.