Word of the Day

: March 29, 2014

yen

noun YEN

What It Means

: a strong desire or propensity : longing; also : urge, craving

yen in Context

Though it has been years since he moved away from home, Johnnie still experiences the occasional yen for his grandmother's cooking.

"The first of the five to enlist was Ford, a devout Irish American Catholic with a yen for the seafaring life." - From a book review by M.G. Lord in the Los Angeles Times (California), February 20, 2014

Did You Know?

Although "yen" suggests no more than a strong longing these days, at one time someone with a yen was in deep trouble indeed. The first meaning of "yen" was an intense craving for opium. The late 19th-century English term evolved from the Cantonese "yīn-yáhn," which itself combines "yīn,” meaning “opium,” and "yáhn," meaning "craving." In English, the Chinese syllables were transformed to "yen-yen" and ultimately abbreviated to simply "yen." Eventually, "yen" was generalized to the more innocuous meaning of "a strong desire," and the link to drug cravings was lost.