And you thought it was just Wikipedia that was ... unreliable?

One of the "headlines" on my computer news feed this morning was Yanked off air. Apparently yet another sportscaster has embarrassed himself by saying something offensive to an entire group of people and lost his job as a result. Why this is news is unclear to me.

But it made me wonder about the origin of the word yank, which means, we are told by Merriam Webster Online,

: to suddenly pull (something) in a quick, forceful way

: to quickly or suddenly remove (something or someone)

 Okay, I pretty much knew that part. What I wanted to know was the origin of the word. (Did it have anything to do with the word Yankee, for example.) But M-W assures me that the origin is unknown. It goes on, however, to say that the first known use was in 1822. So probably not some Rebel slang slander of the Union soldiers.

But being the curious person that I am -- and you can feel free to take that every which way you wish -- I scrolled down. I have learned not to stop reading too soon.

The next entry (unidentified source) said the first known use was circa 1864, squarely in the middle of the Civil War, and making me wonder about those pesky Union dudes again. But it is more than forty years later than the date given by M-W.

Scroll further and discover that Yank as a person from the US of A appears for the first time in 1778, as far as we know.

For what that's worth.

You pays your money, you takes your chances.