Yabba Dabba Doo!

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“Yabba Dabba Doo!” , Also “Yabadabadoo!” , Is a winged word in American colloquial language . The term, which is usually used in the form of a short exclamation, is mostly used to convey feelings of joy or enthusiasm.

The term has its origin in the US cartoon series Flintstones from the 1960s. There it was incorporated as a routinely recurring trademark of the Stone Age man Fred Feuerstein. This was one of the main characters in the series and always used this exclamation when he was particularly happy. Thanks to the huge popularity of the series, the term soon found its way into American pop culture and eventually entered American vocabulary as colloquialism . Magill claims that Feuerstein's throaty scream became a "symbol of the new American cartoon" in the 1960s. As a scene-typical exclamation when performing daring jumps or driving through a wave tunnel and similar difficult water maneuvers, Yabba Dabba Doo! also often used in the American surfer milieu.

Lawson and Persons attribute the origin of the twist to an event during the production of the first season of the Flintstones : When recording these early episodes, Alan Reed , who lent his voice to Fred Flintstone, was dissatisfied with a passage in the script that featured his character yahoo should exclaim in expression of joy . When Reed pointed out that in his opinion this exclamation did not fit the character of Fred Flintstone, the producer Josef Barbera asked him what Fred Feuerstein should spontaneously call out instead to give his enthusiasm an outlet. Reed replied: "I don't know how about yabba dabba doo?"

Individual evidence

  1. Eric Partridge / Tom Dalzell / Terry Victor: The New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English , 2006, p. 2132. See also: John Ayto / Ian Crofton: Brewer's Dictionary of Modern Phrase & Fable , 2007, p. 275 and Nigel Rees: Cassell's Dictionary of Catchphrases , 2005, p. 258.
  2. ^ Frank Northen Magill: Events from History II. , 1993, p. 1841.
  3. Trevor Cralle: The Surfin'ary. A Dictionary of Surfing Terms and Surfspeak , 2001, p. 329.
  4. Tim Lawson / Alisa Persons: The Magic Behinder the Voices. A Who's Who of Cartoon Voice Actors , 2004, p. 289. The original says "I don't know. How about yabba dabba doo".