yeti

n., pl., -tis.
See abominable snowman.

[Alteration of Tibetan miti : mi, person + ti, a kind of animal.]

from Tibetan
This word originated in Tibet

In 1953 England's Sir Edmund Hillary made history by leading an expedition that took him, along with Tenzing Norgay of Nepal, to the top of Mount Everest. On the way up he noticed giant footprints in the snow that were said to belong to an apelike creature called a yeti. Curious about this elusive animal, Hillary returned to Tibet in 1960 and tried to make natural history by leading an expedition in search of the yeti. The second expedition failed as completely as the first had succeeded. Not only did he not see an actual yeti, alive or dead, but even the relics shown him proved to be something else. A shaggy fur hide came from a Tibetan blue bear; a supposed scalp of a yeti came from a serow. And it was noticed that footprints in the snow, over time, tend to grow much larger than the original foot that made them, thus accounting for the "yeti tracks" he had seen. Hillary returned an unbeliever.

Other observers are said to have been more fortunate. In 1938 a certain Captain d'Auvergue, curator of the Victoria Memorial in Calcutta, said that during a trek alone in the Himalayas he was rescued from death by a kind yeti nine feet tall. And in 1974 a Sherpa girl told police that an apelike creature broke the necks of two of her yaks and tried to drag her off before she started screaming.

Whatever the truth, you can definitely find a yeti in the Tibetan language. In Tibetan, yah means rock and ti means animal, so a yeti can be called an animal of the rocks. Alternatively, the first syllable of yeti may be a version of mi, the word for person. Another name for the creature is metoh-kangmi, which has been roughly translated as "abominable snowman."

A little more than a million people speak the Tibetan language, which belongs to the Sino-Tibetan language family, along with Chinese. For most of its history, Tibet remained a hidden realm, high above and far beyond the reach even of the expanding English language, and disinclined to spread its language to the rest of the world. Since 1951, Tibet has been a remote province of China. Despite this isolation, a few words of Tibetan have immigrated into English, mostly designating distinctive animals of the Himalayas. These include goa (1846), a gazelle or antelope; kiang (1869), a red and white wild ass; Lhasa apso (1935), a breed of dog; and of course the yak (1795), beloved of animal alphabet books for beginning with the letter Y. There is also the lama (1654), the Tibetan Buddhist monk.

---

Also known as the "abominable snowman," the yeti is the mysterious humanoid creature reported by Western sources as early as 1832 as living in the Himalayan Mountains. It became well known following several expeditions to the area in the 1950s. In 1960 Sir Edmund Hillary, who conquered Everest, called further attention to the yeti in his attempts to debunk them. The Soviet Ministry of Culture established a group of "cryptozoologists" to locate the yeti, according to a report of January 9, 1988, by Tass, the Soviet press agency. The agency stated that nearly one hundred sightings had been collated by Zhanna Kofman of Moscow.

Sources:

Clark, Jerome. Encyclopedia of Strange and Unexplained Phenomena. Detroit: Gale Research, 1993.

Sanderson, Ivan. Abominable Snowmen: Legend Come to Life. Philadelphia, Pa: Chilton Books, 1961.

IN BRIEF: n. - A large hairy humanoid creature said to live in the Himalayas.

Tutor's tip: This word was used in the 2006 Scripps National Spelling Bee finals.

This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)

Dansk (Danish)
n. - yeti

Nederlands (Dutch)
yeti (legendarisch monster in de Himalaya)

Français (French)
n. - yéti

Deutsch (German)
n. - Yeti, Schneemensch

Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - γιέτι, χιονάνθρωπος των Ιμαλαϊων

Italiano (Italian)
yeti

Português (Portuguese)
n. - abominável homem das neves

Русский (Russian)
снежный человек

Español (Spanish)
n. - abominable hombre de las nieves

Svenska (Swedish)
n. - snömannen i Himalaya

中文（简体）(Chinese (Simplified))
雪人

中文（繁體）(Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 雪人

한국어 (Korean)
n. - (티베트의) 설인

日本語 (Japanese)
n. - 雪男

العربيه (Arabic)
‏(الاسم) اسم يطلق على حيوان غير معروف يقال انه يقطن اعالي جبال الهملايا‏

עברית (Hebrew)
n. - ‮יטי - איש השלג הנתעב (יצור אגדי מטיבט)‬

If you are unable to view some languages clearly, click here.

To select your translation preferences click here.

yeti	merrell yeti chameleon
yeti boots