YAWNING • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Yawning

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/jˈɔnɪŋ/ Listen

Yawning

adjective

1.

Gaping open as if threatening to engulf someone or something. "A yawning abyss"

2.

With the mouth wide open indicating boredom or sleepiness.

3.

Showing lack of attention or boredom. Synonyms: drowsy, oscitant.

noun

1.

An involuntary intake of breath through a wide open mouth; usually triggered by fatigue or boredom. Synonyms: oscitance, oscitancy, yawn. "The yawning in the audience told him it was time to stop" , "He apologized for his oscitancy"

Yawn

verb

(past & past part. yawned; pres. part. yawning)

1.

Utter a yawn, as from lack of oxygen or when one is tired.

2.

Be wide open. Synonyms: gape, yaw.

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WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University

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"Yawning" Quotes from Famous Books

... whistle garrisoned the glen At once with full five hundred men, As if the yawning hill to heaven A ...

— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty

... she declared, in tense tones. "When Jim went to bed, everything was perfectly quiet. And then, when he woke up, all of a sudden, there beside him was a yawning abbess!" ...

— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous

... impossible they could either doubt or forget it. Perhaps it may be so. However, I much fear his instructions have edified out of their place, and taught men to grow wiser in certain points where he never intended they should; for it is lamentable to behold with what a lazy scorn many of the yawning readers in our age do now-a-days twirl over forty or fifty pages of preface and dedication (which is the usual modern stint), as if it were so much Latin. Though it must be also allowed, on the other hand, that a very considerable number is known to proceed critics and wits by reading nothing ...

— A Tale of a Tub • Jonathan Swift

... family had been meant to soften my resistance, it was the worst of failures. I was no such ass but what I understood how poor a figure I had made, and that the girls would be yawning their jaws off as soon as my stiff back was turned. I felt I had shown how little I had in me of what was soft and graceful; and I longed for a chance to prove that I had something of the other ...

— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... of a great terrace, the bank of which sloped almost precipitously down towards it, but was covered with grass. The terrace was some three hundred feet above the river, and faced another similar one, which was from a mile and a half to two miles distant. At the bottom of this huge yawning chasm, rolled the mighty river, and I shuddered at the thought of having to cross and recross it. For it was angry, muddy, evidently in heavy fresh, and filled bank and bank for nearly a mile with a flood ...

— Erewhon Revisited • Samuel Butler

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