yak
noun - Talk, esp idle or empty chatter; mere babbling: All they can talk about, yack-yack-yack, is their own specialty/ I don't care how owlish you look, how convincing you sound, this is just yak yak yak until you do it/ in the midst of all the political yuk-yuk that dins around us/ if the State Department would stop its incessant yakitty-yak (1958+)
- A laugh; a guffaw: ''Take off your clothes.'' Pause for audience yuks/ It makes me furious when I have a corny line and it gets a yock (1938+)
verb - (also yack it up or yak it up or yock it up or yuk it up): Everybody is yakking out an opinion on whether he should now reconsider his candidacy/ sparing the rod and yak-yakking and explaining all the time/ The students were seated on the floor, still yocking away/ I'll be 75 and hanging around bars yocking it up (1950+)
- (also yack it up or yak it up or yock it up or yuk it up): Ken Gaul is yukking, tugging at his pointy satyr's beard/ There'd be Don, yockin' it up like crazy. He's so hysterical with laughter/ former senator George McGovern, yukking it up with Paul Volcker (1938+)
[echoic, perhaps of Yiddish origin]