The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48:

Yank \Yank\, n. [Cf. Scot. yank a sudden and severe blow.]
   A jerk or twitch. [Colloq. U. S.]
   [1913 Webster]

The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48:

Yank \Yank\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Yanked; p. pr. & vb. n.
   Yanking.]
   To twitch; to jerk. [Colloq. U. S.]
   [1913 Webster]

The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48:

Yank \Yank\, n.
   An abbreviation of Yankee. [Slang]
   [1913 Webster]

WordNet (r) 3.0 (2006):

Yank
    n 1: an American who lives in the North (especially during the
         American Civil War) [syn: Yankee, Yank, Northerner]
    2: an American (especially to non-Americans) [syn: Yankee,
       Yank, Yankee-Doodle]
    v 1: pull, or move with a sudden movement; "He turned the handle
         and jerked the door open" [syn: yank, jerk]

Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0:

33 Moby Thesaurus words for "yank":
   bob, clutch, evulse, flick, flip, flirt, flounce, grab, hitch,
   jerk, jig, jigger, jigget, jiggle, jog, joggle, jolt, lug, lurch,
   pluck, pull, snake, snap, snatch, start, sudden pull, tear, tug,
   tweak, twitch, vellicate, wrench, yerk



The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (30 December 2018):

yank

    (From the colloquial meaning "to pull suddenly") To
   insert a copy of some saved text at the current position in a
   document being edited.

   The term is used in the Unix text editors GNU Emacs and
   vi but "paste" is more common elsewhere.

   [Used elsewhere?]

   (1998-07-01)