YAWNING • E-FREE TRANSLATION.COM • Definition of Yawning

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/jˈɔnɪŋ/ Listen

verb

Yawn v. i. (past & past part. yawned; pres. part. yawning)

To open the mouth involuntarily through drowsiness, dullness, or fatigue; to gape; to oscitate. "The lazy, yawning drone." "And while above he spends his breath, The yawning audience nod beneath."

To open wide; to gape, as if to allow the entrance or exit of anything. "'t is now the very witching time of night, When churchyards yawn."

To open the mouth, or to gape, through surprise or bewilderment.

To be eager; to desire to swallow anything; to express desire by yawning; as, to yawn for fat livings. "One long, yawning gaze."

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Etymology of 'Yawning'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Yawning" Quotes from Famous Books

... bedstead, with his body outstretched between soft yet crisply ironed linen sheets, and his head placed exactly in the centre of the pillows, he waited, yawning, until the expected hour should strike. If by an effort of will he could have put back the minute hand for another quarter of an hour he felt that it would have been pleasant to doze off again, shutting his eyes to the sunlight which streamed through the window ...

— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow

... decks and laugh'd, Thousands of their seamen made mock at the mad little craft Running on and on, till delay'd By their mountain-like San Philip that, of fifteen hundred tons, And up-shadowing high above us with her yawning tiers of guns, Took the breath from ...

— The Evolution of Expression Vol. I • Charles Wesley Emerson

... it was fairly broad daylight, and not an Indian feather had shown nor an Indian shot been heard. Slowly, sleepily, at the gruff summons of their sergeants, the troopers were crawling out of their blankets and stretching and yawning by the fires. No stirring trumpet-call had roused them from their dreams. A stickler for style and ceremony was the major in garrison, but out on Indian campaign he was "horse sense from the ground up," as his veterans put it. He observed ...

— To The Front - A Sequel to Cadet Days • Charles King

... here, now there, the wild waves sweep, Whilst we, betwixt them o'er the deep, In shatter'd tempest-beaten bark, With laboring ropes are onward driven, The billows dashing o'er our dark Upheaved deck—in tatters riven Our sails—whose yawning rents between The raging sea and ...

— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner

... but it threw him into a fathomless despair, where he no longer defined his thoughts into words. Her face shone like a star, but it stood over a bottomless rift in the earth and showed how impassable its yawning barrier was. ...

— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland

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