おっす (ossu)

What it means

1. 1.

   Yo. A brusque male greeting, standard in martial-arts clubs and sports teams and used casually between male friends.

   Strongly gendered and strongly informal. A woman using it is making a deliberate joke; a junior using it to a senior outside sport is rude.

Examples with translations

• おっす、久しぶり。

  Yo — long time.

• うっす、今行きます。

  Yep, on my way.

Where it comes from

Generally explained as a compression of おはようございます. The martial-arts spelling 押忍 ('push and endure') is a later back-formation invented to give the syllables a moral reading.

Other forms

Romanised as:

ossu

Spellings and variants:

押忍, うっす