yada yada yada

Meaning

Phrase

• And so on; and so forth.
• blah blah blah.

Related

Similar words

• and so forth, and so on, and yada yada, and yadda yadda, etc., etcetera, blah blah blah

Origin

• Chiefly US Probably influenced by (or perhaps an alteration of) yatter or yatata; perhaps onomatopoeic of blather ; or perhaps derived from the Norwegian expression "jada" which has a similar pronunciation and interpretation. Sometimes popularly attributed to Yiddish, but this is dismissed by etymologists.
• "Yatter, yatter" is British (specifically Scots) English for "continuous chatter, rambling and persistent talk". S. R. Crockett, The Men of the Moss-Hags (1895) xxix: "The woman's yatter, yatter easily vexed me." Yadder is a Cumberland word meaning "to talk incessantly; to chatter".
• Various variant forms appear in the US 1940s–60s; for example, the 1947 American musical Allegro by Oscar Hammerstein II and Richard Rodgers contains a song called “Yatata, Yatata, Yatata,” about cocktail party chatter; see talk page for additional citations.
• The phrase "yadda yadda" was first popularized by the comedian Lenny Bruce in his standup bit "Father Flotsky's Triumph," the closing track on his 1961 album "Lenny Bruce - American." It gained renewed popularity in the US in the late 1990s on the television show Seinfeld, where it appears as a catchphrase, initially in Season 8, Episode 19, entitled “The Yada Yada”, originally aired on April 24, 1997, which centers around the phrase (in the duplicative “yada yada” form).