28 Adjectives That Start With Y
Y is a small letter, and a page that pretends otherwise is padding. English has a few dozen adjectives beginning with Y, and 12 of them cluster around just three ideas: age, the colour yellow, and noises made by animals and by people behaving like them. This page lists 28 adjectives that start with Y — every one a real word, with nothing coined to make the number rounder.
Five of them — yellowed, yoked, yammering, yelping and yowling — are participles doing an adjective’s job rather than adjectives in their own right. They are here because they are what you would actually write, and flagged because a dictionary will send you to the verb instead.
That scarcity is worth knowing in itself. If you are working through the alphabet for a piece of writing, Y is the letter where you stop looking for a describing word and start looking for a better noun.
All 28 adjectives at a glance
yammering, yappy, yare, yawning, yclept, yearlong, yearly, yeasty, yellow, yellow-bellied, yellowed, yellowish, yelping, yeomanly, yielding, yobbish, yogic, yoked, yolky, yon, yonder, young, youngish, youthful, yowling, yttric, yucky, yummy
For people
Age accounts for three of these on its own. Yare and yeomanly are the two worth rescuing: both are old and both are compliments, though yeomanly now competes with dependable and stalwart.
| Adjective | What it means |
|---|---|
| young | early in life |
| youngish | past first youth but not yet middle-aged |
| youthful | having the qualities of a young person |
| yobbish | loutish and aggressively rude |
| yappy | talking on and on in a shrill, irritating way |
| yammering | complaining loudly and at length |
| yare | quick and ready to hand |
| yeomanly | sturdy and dependable |
For things, colours and sounds
Four colour words, two calendar words, two animal noises and a scattering that belongs nowhere else. Yawning is the most useful of them, because it describes a gap rather than a mouth.
| Adjective | What it means |
|---|---|
| yearly | happening once a year |
| yearlong | lasting a whole year |
| yellow | the colour of butter and lemons |
| yellowed | turned yellow with age |
| yellowish | tending toward yellow |
| yolky | of or resembling egg yolk |
| yeasty | smelling or frothing of yeast |
| yummy | delicious |
| yucky | causing disgust or aversion |
| yoked | harnessed together, or burdened and paired |
| yawning | opening wide, of a gap or chasm |
| yelping | giving short sharp cries |
| yowling | making a long wailing cry |
| yon | that one over there, in poetic or dialect use |
| yonder | situated at a distance but still in view |
| yogic | relating to yoga |
For feelings and mood
The letter’s thinnest section, and it takes hunting to fill. Yielding and yellow-bellied sit here rather than with the people words because both describe a state under pressure rather than a settled type.
| Adjective | What it means |
|---|---|
| yielding | inclined to give way rather than hold a position |
| yellow-bellied | cowardly |
Rare and specialist
Two words you will meet in reading rather than use in writing. Yclept turns up in older texts and yttric in chemistry papers; neither is a word to reach for otherwise.
| Adjective | What it means |
|---|---|
| yclept | called or named, in archaic use |
| yttric | containing yttrium |
Positive and negative at a glance
Sorting by job rather than by tone means compliments and criticisms sit side by side above. Here a selection of them is separated into three columns, using words already defined on this page — and the third column is the interesting one.
| Clearly positive | Clearly negative | Depends on the sentence |
|---|---|---|
| young, youthful, yare, yeomanly, yummy, yogic | yobbish, yappy, yellow-bellied, yucky, yammering, yowling | yellowed, yeasty, yawning, yielding, yoked |
The third column is where the letter is most interesting. Yellowed is a fact about paper and an accusation about a reputation; yawning is neutral about a canyon and ominous about a gap in an argument.
Using them in a sentence
- A yawning gap in the accounts, and a yielding auditor.
- The pages were yellowed and the binding yeasty with damp.
- He was youngish, yappy and entirely sure of himself.
- A yappy dog at the door, and then a yellow-bellied exit through it.
- A yeomanly effort in poor light, on a yearlong contract nobody wanted.
Related guides
- Adjectives for youth — the fuller vocabulary of age, which Y can only gesture at.
- Adjectives for the young — where youthful and youngish belong.
- Adjectives for yellow — far more precise than yellowish on its own.
- Adjectives for a year — pairs with yearly and yearlong.
- Adjectives for describing yourself — the self-description set, where the letter runs out fastest.
Checked against Merriam-Webster, the Chicago Manual of Style and the AP Stylebook. Spotted an error? Tell us — see our editorial policy.
