you'uns - From Ulster to America
Source: From Ulster to America: The Scotch-Irish Heritage of American English
Author: Michael Montgomery
Comments: From Ulster to America recounts the lasting impact eighteenth-century settlers from Ulster have made on the development of the English language of the United States. The book documents over 500 vocabulary items contributed to American English by these ‘Scotch-Irish’ settlers. Each ‘shared’ term with its meaning is authenticated by quotations from both sides of the Atlantic. This searchable online version of his book takes its text from the dictionary part of the second edition published by the Ullans Press in 2017.
you’uns, yinz, yunz pron You (plural), all of you. Cf y’all, yous, yous’uns. [snd you yins (at yin pron/adj 3); dare you-uns pron chiefly Midland]
Ulst.:
1936 White Mrs Murphy 143 I wouldn’t say but the hangman’s rope might have been the end of Teddy if it hadn’t been for you’uns.
1953 Traynor Donegal Glossary 335 Will you’uns stay long at Glenalla?
U.S.:
1810 Bell Journey to Ohio 37 Youns is a word I have heard several times, but what it means I don’t know.
1862 (in 1999 Davis Civil War Letters) 77 I recived a letter from awl of younes the other day.
1939 Aurand Idioms and Expressions 25 YOU’NS ain’t the only PEPPLES (pebbles) on the PEACH (beach).
1949 Kurath Word Geog East US 67 You’ns is the Midland form and occurs in the folk speech in Pennsylvania west of the Susquehanna, in large parts of West Virginia, and in the westernmost parts of Virginia and North Carolina.
1956 GSMNP-22:17 I was just scared, afraid some of you’uns would get bit.
1982 McCool Pittsburghese 39 = all of you, literally ‘you ones’: ‘Are yunz going to the game?’
2004 Yunzonics: yunz = Possibly a shortening of you’uns, or a shorterning, or an attempt to make up a different, unique word for the plural form of the second-person of the pronoun you … People who make fun of it draw attention to it locally by saying something like ‘yunzes’ or ‘yinziz’ [in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania].
