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From: Roger Hill <>
Subject: Yea-sayer no Yes-man; Jasager; Nodder; Beni-oui-oui, No-man & co.
Date: Sat, 02 Mar 2002 16:24:11 -0600


YEA-SAYER: One who says 'yea' or who agrees; a person inclined by
nature to assent, or to act in a positive manner
('yea' -- rhymes with 'nay').

YES-MAN: A man who agrees from self-interest or fear with everything
put to him by a superior; an obsequious subordinate.

'Yea-sayer' <'yea-saying' <'yea-say', vb, after 'nay-say', vb.

YEA-AND-NAY MAN: a quaker.

Richard Yea-and-Nay: a nickname for Richard I.

YEA-FORSOOTH, adj: addicted to saying 'yea-forsooth' in the way of
superficial assent.
-- OED.

YEA-FORSOOTH in Shax: "A rascally yea-forsooth-knave,/..."

As expressions, 'yea-forsooth' and 'nay-forsooth' were habits of the
Puritans, who occupied a socio-cultural position antithetical to C17
theatre people. The P's shut down the C17 theatres for a generation.

Like YEA-FORSOOTH, YEA-SAYER is easily pejorative.
OED cites 'brazen yea-saying', 1875.

So YEA-SAYER is quite a bit older than the early C20 YES-MAN.
But pejorative YEA-SAYER is different in sense from YES-MAN,
and more literary.

G. Orwell, in one of his essays, 1940:
"There are the 'progressives', the yea-sayers, the
Shaw-Wells type, always leaping forward to embrace
the ego-projections which they mistake for the future."

By an auth. unknown in Partisan Review, 1960:
"In literary criticism, artless enthusiam has modulated
into more restrained yea-saying."

(London) Times, 1960: "...traditional, yea-saying materialism."

Elsewhere...
JASAGER, German, appears to transliterate YEA-SAYER;
but it more often translates YES-MAN.

On the other hand, Bertolt Brecht's interwar period play for schools,
DER JASAGER, targeted conformity and Nazi ideas about brutal solutions
for social problems.

Here locally in January, Brecht's DER JASAGER was subtitled
'The Man Who Said Yes'. This evaded rather than addressed the
translation problem. I'd say Brecht's title translates better as
YEA-SAYER than YES-MAN; or maybe some of both.

NODDER: this occurs in Wodehouse.
Heroine: "What do you do?"
Hero: "I'm a nodder."
-- which is dreadful, a miming and voiceless yes-man.

BENI-OUI-OUI, Fr., translates YES-MAN; the repetitive 'oui' mocks
facile assent; the 'BENI-' element appears to mean 'blessed'.

Elsewhere, Sp PELOTILLA = 'brownnoser', but also translates YES-MAN;
Sp 'hacerle la pelotilla a algun', phr vb, to brownnose;
'pelotilleo', fawning, creeping.

And NO-MAN? NO-MAN ought to be an antonym for YES-MAN, but is
formed differently. The YES of YES-MAN is an adverb compounding
with a noun. The NO of NO-MAN is adjectival. However...

The first example of NO-MAN that I ever read of was Odysseus'
encounter with the Cyclops, in which the adjectivally-compounded
NO-MAN produces an adverbial NO through symbolic action when...

...the cunning Odys identifies himself as 'Noman' and blinds the
one-eyed giant. He escapes while the Cyclops calls for vengeance
on 'no man'.

The YES-MAN cannot be an Odyssean NO-MAN, but a nobody, yes.

Roger
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