[Tibetan γyag (Jäschke).] A bovine animal (Poephagus grunniens), found wild and domesticated in Tibet and other high regions of central Asia, having the body and tail covered with long silky hair, which is made into various fabrics; the tails are used for decoration, and in India as fly-flappers (see CHOWRY).
1799. S. Turner, Embassy Tibet (1800), 186. The black chowry-tailed cattle … the Yak of Tartary.
1862. Torrens, Trav. Tartary, etc. 125. The oxen mostly used in Ladak are hybrids between the yâk and the common cow.
1893. Dunmore, Pamirs, I. 246. I remounted my yak.
1903. Athenæum, 1 Aug., 163/1. Only in the valleys does scanty scrub give sustenance to the yaks, on whose services the travellers depended.
b. attrib. and Comb., as yak corps, -hair, -tail; yak lace, a heavy kind of lace made from the hair of the yak.
1904. Times, 18 Jan., 5/6. The transport difficulties are still enormous, though the *Yak Corps is working well.
1905. E. Candler, Unveiling of Lhasa, xiv. 268. A heavy curtain of *yak-hair hangs above the entrance-gate.
1882. Caulfeild & Saward, Dict. Needlework, 525. *Yak Lace … is a coarse Pillow Lace, made in Buckinghamshire and Northampton…. The material used is from the fine wool of the Yak.
1902. Q. Rev., July, 42. Strange gifts from the East … *yak-tails and peacock feathers.
