Yas

An extra-enthusiastic yes, stretched as long as the moment deserves, usually followed by queen: a cheer born in the drag and ballroom scene.

Yas is yes with the volume turned up and the vowel stretched until it nearly snaps: yaaas. It is pure enthusiasm, the sound you make when a friend shows you his new haircut, when the diva hits the note, when the hot guy from the gym finally texts back. It almost always comes with a partner: yas queen, yas gawd, yas bitch.

It is not a word for agreeing with a plan. "Shall we leave at eight?" does not get a yas. It is a word for cheering, and the cheer is the point.

Where it comes from

Yas grew up in the Black and Latino drag and ballroom scene, where the crowd shouted encouragement at whoever was walking, and where queens addressed each other as queen because what else would you call one. Nobody has found a reliable first written example, so we will not pretend to know the year.

What we do know is how it escaped. In 2013 a fan video of a man screaming "Yaaas Gaga" at Lady Gaga went viral, and in the mid-2010s the comedy Broad City made "yas queen" a catchphrase. A wave of articles then credited the show and the fan with inventing it, which writers from the scene found comical: they had only given a ballroom phrase a wider stage.

How it is used today

Yas is everywhere, and its spelling stretches with the mood: yas, yass, yaaas, yaaaaaas. The more letters, the bigger the moment. Among gay men it still lives mostly in the voice, at the bar, in voice notes, in the group chat when somebody posts the photo from the night before.

Like slay, werk and fierce, it has become so common outside the community that it is sometimes used a little ironically inside it. Nobody minds. A yas is still a yas.

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