Other forms: yanks, yanked, yanking
To yank is to pull sharply and suddenly. Yank the door open, yanked it out, yank the cord.
The suddenness is the whole word: pulling is steady and yanking is not. As a noun, a yank is one such pull: give it a yank. Note that Yank with a capital letter is an informal and sometimes unfriendly word for an American, from Yankee, and is entirely unrelated to the verb — which is worth knowing before using either in company.
1verbyankTo pull sharply and suddenly.
“He yanked the handle and it came away in his hand.”
2nounsharpA sharp sudden pull.
“One good yank and the whole thing came free.”
yank is a sharp pull.
The verb appeared in Scots in the eighteenth century and its origin is unknown. Yankee is a separate word of disputed origin, probably from Dutch, and the two collided in English by accident.
Scots
yank
English, today
yank
Attested since 1822; from Scots yank. unknown origin.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in Hitting & Pushing