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A 'Yahoo' is a legendary being in the novel ''Gulliver's Travels'' (1726) by Jonathan Swift.
Swift describes the Yahoos as vile and savage creatures, filthy and with unpleasant habits, resembling human beings far too closely for the liking of protagonist Lemuel Gulliver, who finds the calm and rational society of the Houyhnhnms far preferable. The Yahoos are primitive creatures obsessed with "pretty stones" they find by digging in mud, thus representing the distasteful materialism and ignorant elitism Swift encountered in Britain. Hence the term "Yahoo" has become synonymous with "cretin," "dinosaur," and/or "Neanderthal."
The yowie, a giant creature from Australian myth and folklore, may have been an inspiration for Swift's Yahoos. The ancient Hebrew name Jehu, meaning 'Jehovah is he', may also have been the inspiration for this. The term Jehu was sometimes used as insult in ancient Jewish times.
American frontiersman Daniel Boone^[1] claimed that he killed a hairy giant that he called a Yahoo. Boone often used terms from ''Gulliver's Travels''.
Yahoos were referenced in some of letters the killer called "Son of Sam" sent to New York City police in the 1970s.

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References

1. Did fiction give birth to Bigfoot? by Hugh H. Trotti

See also

★ Caveman