yikes

Yikes is what you say when something is embarrassing, awkward or alarming. It’s a wince in word form: part surprise, part secondhand embarrassment.

How people use it

Merriam-Webster defines it as an expression of fear or surprise. Online, it’s most often a reaction to something cringeworthy: a terrible text, a public argument, a bad haircut reveal. It can also be sympathetic, as in “yikes, I’m sorry, that sounds awful.” People stretch it for emphasis: “big yikes” or “yikes on bikes.”

It’s not rude, so you can say it at work, to your parents or in a text to your boss, which is part of why it has lasted.

Examples

• “He proposed on the jumbotron and she said no. Yikes.”
• “Yikes, the meeting got moved to 7 a.m.”
• “Reading my old tweets from 2014. Big yikes.”

Where it came from

Yikes is older than it sounds. Merriam-Webster thinks it’s probably an alteration of “yoicks,” a cry used in fox hunting that goes back to the 1700s. Merriam-Webster gives a first known use of 1941.

Yikes vs. cringe

Cringe describes the thing that makes you uncomfortable. Yikes is your reaction to it. You see something cringe, you say “yikes.”

Related terms

• cringe: embarrassing to watch
• shook: shocked or rattled
• L: a loss
• dead: laughing too hard to function
• sus: suspicious

See more terms like this in our Gen Z slang dictionary.