Meaning
A person, especially a man in a subordinate position, who habitually agrees with a superior or endorses everything said without criticism; an obsequious flatterer. The OED defines it as one who habitually agrees with or assents to the proposals of a superior; the term is colloquial, usually disparaging, and originally American. Disparaging. Plural yes-men; the coordinate term yes-woman and the derived yesmanship extend the pattern. The 2008 Jim Carrey film Yes Man popularized the phrase's literal-comic side but played no part in its origin. Regional use: Coined in American English; now common across British and international English.
Origin
The record contradicts the popular 1920s-origin story. The OED calls yes-man colloquial, originally US and usually disparaging, formed from yes plus man, with earliest evidence in 1874, in the True Latter Day Saints' Herald: 'While invariably we despise the crafty yes-man.' Wiktionary antedates even that with a New Zealand Parliamentary Debates quotation of 1868: 'The function of a Vice-President is the job of a yes-man, as they call it in America' - implying the term already circulated in America by the late 1860s. The word then spread sharply after 1911: Etymonline dates the familiar sense to 1911, first in accounts of social 'Liars Clubs', with a broader boost in early 1912 from a Century Magazine story on the dangers to a business leader of surrounding himself with those who only agree; Merriam-Webster's first known use is 1912. The dictionaries therefore disagree openly on first use - 1868, 1874, 1911, 1912 - but all predate the 1920s. A claim that a 1921 Henry Kitchell Webster story coined the word could not be verified in any source fetched, and no source supports a baseball origin.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- yes-woman
- yesmanship
- yesmen
Usage Examples
- He lasted a month in the boardroom because he refused to be a yes-man.
- The new chief executive purged the yes-men and told managers to challenge her plans.
- Surrounded by yes-men, the director lost all sense of what ordinary customers wanted.