yawning

Pluralyawnings

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of yawn.

   He couldn't stop yawning during the afternoon lecture.

   Yawning repeatedly, the driver pulled over to rest for a while.

   Note

   The verb form behind progressives and participle clauses. It carries every use of yawn with it: the tired gape, speech delivered mid-yawn (she was yawning her apologies), and a cliff or doorway that yawns open. As a gerund it still behaves like a verb and takes adverbs (yawning repeatedly). Once it takes adjectives or a plural, it has become the noun for the act.

2. 2
   adjectivefiguratively

   Of a gap, hole, or opening: extremely wide and deep.

   The earthquake left a yawning crack running across the highway.

   Below the ridge stretched a yawning ravine that no one dared cross.

   Similargaping, cavernous, vast, wide

   Oppositenarrow

   Note

   A metaphor so settled it hardly feels like one: the open mouth becomes a chasm, a crack, a pair of jaws. Its favorite partners are gap and chasm, and gap often leaves the physical world entirely. The Economist in 2013 wrote of "the yawning gap" in neuroscientists' understanding, and Gil Schwartz in Men's Health (2007) wrote of one within himself. Used this way, the word stresses how large and conspicuous a shortfall is.

3. 3
   nouncountable or uncountable

   The act of opening the mouth wide while drawing a deep breath, typically brought on by tiredness or boredom.

   A wave of yawning passed through the audience as the lecture dragged on.

   The doctor explained that yawning helps regulate the temperature of the brain.

   Note

   The noun counts both ways: you can speak of yawning in general or of separate yawnings. Its best-known property is its contagiousness. Letitia Elizabeth Landon, in Romance and Reality (1831), calls a girl's laugh "as catching as yawning" and expects the reader to take the comparison for granted. As catching as yawning still works as a ready simile for anything that spreads from person to person.

4. 4
   adjective

   Of a person or creature: in the act of opening the mouth wide and drawing a deep breath.

   A yawning lion stretched out lazily in the afternoon sun.

   The yawning students could barely keep their eyes open by midnight.

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