A Guardian writer seems to have got this completely wrong in reporting responses to Ricky Gervais’s Golden Globe hosting:

‘“Ricky Gervais makes a joke calling Mel Gibson a drunk, and seriously is killing the crowd.” It followed up later on with another post, “Ricky Gervais is seriously causing a record number of LOLz tonight.” Lolz is internet speak for yuks.
Despite the split verdict...’

Yuk is taken to mean icky or lousy here, I think, but a Grauniad reader posting a response suggests:

I think ‘yuks’ are the way they used to laugh in the Archie comics, as in “Yuk yuk yuk!”

I have never read these but definitely remember seeing “Yok yok yok” for American laughter somewhere, and:

yuk
1  /yʌk/ ,noun, verb, yukked, yuk⋅king. Slang.
–noun
1.  a loud, hearty laugh.
2.  a joke evoking such a laugh.
–verb (used without object), verb (used with object)
3.  to laugh or joke: The audience really yukked it up at the movie.
Also, yuck, yock, yok, yak.
Origin:
imit.
Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Dictionary

Yak for meaningless and protracted chatter is bi-pondal. Cognac is also called yak by rappers which I hope catches on more widely though nyak would be better.

I would have thought LOLz was plural of LOL but another reader posts this wiktionary link:

LOLZ
1. (Internet slang) Variant of LOL with the Z serving only to make the acronym look like a plural noun, or, more commonly, sarcastically used; serving as a mockery of those who use the “z” to pluralize other nouns, as opposed to the “s.” The mockery of such people is often not done in any kind of specific context, but usually as a way to lighten up a conversation.

It seems I have answered my own question but any comments welcome.

The only question here seems to be the meaning of “yuks,” and I assure you it unambiguously means laughs.  (Next time you realize you’ve rambled on long enough to have answered your own question, you might want to either delete or severely edit your post, as a courtesy to others.)

Did I ever mention that ‘lol’ in Dutch means ‘fun’? Yeah, sure I did. So no need for this post either.

OK then. I thought it might lead to interesting asides, anecdotes or disputation but it seems I have cleared everything up definitively.

languagehat - 19 January 2010 11:02 AM

The only question here seems to be the meaning of “yuks,” and I assure you it unambiguously means laughs.

Well it didn’t (and doesn’t) unambiguously mean “laughs” to me - “yuk” in my idiolect (SE England) has the primary meaning “reaction of disgust”, an alternative spelling of “yuck”, and while I might recognise in context that someone portrayed as going “yuk yuk yuk” was meant to be laughing in a cartoonish manner, my initial interpretation of reading about someone going “yuk yuk yuk” would be that they were reacting because they had stepped in something unpleasant. So when I started reading VB’s post, having seen that some people were upset at Gervaise’s speech at the Golden Globes, I thought it was going to be about someone thinking Lolz meant disgust.

Having now read the Guardian report, I still remain slightly confused about the interpretation of “small-penis yuks”, and “Lolz means yuks”, only because the “disgust” meaning of “yuk” fits the context, although I can see now that “laughs” and/or “jokes” probably fits better. Reading the comments under the Guardian piece, it appears I am not the only Briton confused by “yuks”.

FWIW, the OED has an entry only under “yuck","An expression of strong distaste or disgust”, although some six out of seven of the quotes they then supply spell it “yuk”. (Actually, there is a definition of “Yuk” in the OED - “A dialect of Yupik.")

Check out the OED’s yuck v.2, meaning “to laugh,” and the entry (but not the header) includes yuck n.3, “a laugh.” The dictionary notes that it is chiefly North American, dating to the 1960s.

To me the meaning of yuk in the Guardian piece is utterly clear, but if I were not familiar with yuk = laugh or the meaning of LOLz, then I might not be so certain.

Ach - that’ll teach me to be more thorough in my OED-digging. My suspicion is still that most BrE speakers will take yuck/yuk to mean disgust rather than laughter - maybe I’ll put this to Lynneguist at separatedbyacommonlanguage.

I’ll back you on that one, Zytho; I, too, thought that “yuk"s were expressions of disgust at first.

"Yuk is taken to mean icky or lousy here, I think,” by the Grauniad writer I said in my original post, so cruelly dismissed. Interesting eg of a tyro getting stuff wrong through not knowing how to look words up, or not being arsed, or being hard pressed timewise.