Why Irish people call things 'yoke'
As an Irish person, I and the people around me use the word 'yoke' to mean 'thing' (especially if we've forgotten the name of something). To a non-Irish person, a 'yoke' is a wooden harness for two cows (or other animal) to pull a load together with. So how did it gain this other meaning?It is thought that while 'yoke' originally referred to the harness, it started being used to describe any tool, and then any thing in general. This is an example of semantic bleaching, where a word gains a weaker or more general meaning.
A similar pattern is seen with the word 'item', which originally meant 'also', and was often used in lists (first one thing, item some other thing, item a different thing etc.). The word's meaning shifted to an item on a list, and then any item that could be on a list (so, anything).
The word 'thing' itself is also an example of semantic bleaching. It comes from a Proto-Germanic word for an assembly, but its meaning then shifted to the things discussed at an assembly, and then to anything at all. The versions of this word brought into Icelandic and Swedish keep its original meaning.