Yada yada

Yada yada is an American idiom which describes repetitive, boring or tedious speech. Yada yada is often used as an interjection to comment on the quality of what someone is saying. Yada yada is also used by a speaker to skip over repetitive information and get to the point. While many people believe that yada yada was invented by the writers of the American situation-comedy, Seinfeld, the term is actually a bit older than that. Lenny Bruce, a controversial American comedian active in the 1960s, used the phrase with the spelling yaddeyahdah. It is believed that the term has been around since the days of vaudeville. The resurgence in popularity of the term yada yada may certainly be ascribed to the Seinfeld television series, the phrase is often rendered with three yadas rather than two.

Examples

Indeed, what Obama said last week about a Northern Ireland ‘identity’ and integrated education was much the same as the blah blah, yada yada, keep-on-smiling platitude he showered across the hand picked, carefully vetted school audience at the Waterfront Hall back in June 2013. (The Irish News)

“I’ll go to the big banks, I’ll sit them down, and yada yada yada, they’ll be broken up,” he explained. (Variety)

Yada, yada, yada and four decades later Beck nominates Cronin Farms for the prestigious Leopold Conservation Award for South Dakota. (The Capital Journal)

“Because as a man and a father I want my son to experience fatherhood and being a father and being a grandfather and yada yada,” he said during the interview. (TIME Magazine)

You couldn’t blame her, however, if she scowled over the yada yada from the folks who find her photographic countenance too stern, like that guy who wrote in some Facebook post, “They could make her smile a little can’t they?” (The Chicago Tribune)