One way to hold this word: a small dog at a door, letting out short high barks that will not stop. The sound is thin and sharp, it repeats, and it arrives in the ear of someone who did not ask for it. Say the word out loud and you have the noise. Everything else on this page is that noise moved onto a person — their talking, the talk itself, and finally the mouth it comes out of — which is why none of it is ever a compliment.
From the word’s history
The packet's Wiktionary entry says it is probably of imitative origin, or from dialectal yap / yaup / yalp (to yap, yelp), and points to yelp — so the word was built out of the sound it names.
手上的維基詞典資料寫著：這個字很可能是擬聲來的，也可能來自方言的 yap、yaup、yalp（吠、嗥），並要人參考 yelp。也就是說，這個字是照著它所指的那個聲音造出來的。
Wiktionary entries supplied in this packet (source_refs kaikki:3f6f69a190036ae4:543545817:11253 and :543557070:12426): Probably of imitative origin. Alternatively, from dialectal yap, yaup, yalp. More at yelp.
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