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Yawning   /jˈɔnɪŋ/   Listen
Yawning

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"






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Yawning" Quotes from Famous Books



... All, all inspire me, for of all I sing, Doctor and Jew, and M—s and K—g. Thou, to the maudlin muse of Rydal dear; Thou more than Neptune, Lowther, lend thine ear. At Neptune's voice the horse, with flowing mane And pawing hoof, sprung from the obedient plain; But at thy word the yawning earth, in fright, Engulf'd the victor steed from mortal sight. Haste from thy woods, mine Arbuthnot, with speed, Rich woods, where lean Scotch cattle love to feed: Let Gaffer Gooch and Boodle's patriot ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... contrast between the bright heaven I had so recently gazed upon and the abyss now yawning at my feet! But so it is in the Court and the world! I felt then the nothingness of even the most desirable future, by an inward sentiment, which, nevertheless, indicates how we cling to it. Fear on account ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... cleaver had a blade about two feet long, and he never made but one cut; he made it so neatly, too, that his implement did not smite through and dull itself—there was just enough force for a perfect cut, and no more. So through various yawning holes there slipped to the floor below—to one room hams, to another forequarters, to another sides of pork. One might go down to this floor and see the pickling rooms, where the hams were put into vats, and the great smoke rooms, with their airtight iron doors. ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair

... to the heroine. He not only takes off his overcoat and rubbers, but tilts his chair, stays till midnight, and in every way calls down the wrath of that accomplished prig Mr. Louis Gaston, who is a high-toned Northerner. This yawning gulf between the generous faults of the South and the fastidious Phariseeism of the North is the problem of the book. The story is slight, wholly conventional, and rather commonplace, but it is gracefully told, and the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various

... few days following, the hunt led me through all Gatun and vicinity. Now I found myself racing across the narrow plank bridges above the yawning gulf of the locks, with far below tiny men and toy trains, now in and out among the cathedral-like flying buttresses, under the giant arches past staring signs of "DANGER!" on every hand—as if one could not plainly hear its presence without the posting. I descended to the ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck

... exposed the fallacy of studio lighting, so Degas revealed the inanity of its poses. Ibsen said the stage should be a room with the fourth wall removed; Degas preferred the key-hole through which we seem to peep upon the privacy of his ugly females bathing or combing their hair or sleeping, lounging, yawning, quarrelling, and walking. The simian and frog-like gestures and sprawling attitudes are far from arousing amiable sensations. These poor, tired women, hard-working laundresses, shopgirls, are not alluring, though they are ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker

... night march, as the heat of the day was too great to travel in. At three in the morning, yawning and stretching our limbs when we were roused by the charvadar,[5] we got on the mules and made our departure. The cold was intense, and the wind blowing with all its might from the west. Six miles off we passed Kamalbek, then ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor

... o'clock Grace was on her way toward Main Street, bent on disposing of her errands with all possible speed. The vision of her yawning trunk, flanked by piles of clothing waiting patiently to be put in it, loomed large before her. Later on, keeping her appointment with Arline, she heroically tore herself from that fascinating young woman's society and hurried toward Wayne Hall, filled with laudable intentions. Anne had finished ...
— Grace Harlowe's Third Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower

... Supposing I told you that you could look at them and enjoy the sight of them, and nobody could do more?... No, my boy, to enjoy a thing properly you've got to own it. And anybody who says the contrary is probably a member of the League of all the Arts." He gave another enormous yawn. "Excuse my yawning, Paul, but this house is a perfect Inferno for me. The church of St. Nicodemus is hard by, and the church of St. Nicodemus has a striking clock, and the clock strikes all the hours and all the quarters on ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett

... found employment in getting up, or trying to get up, a desperate flirtation with her; but being, to my private satisfaction, entirely cut off from both these sources of diversion, his sufferings were truly deplorable. When he had done yawning over his paper and scribbling short answers to his shorter letters, he spent the remainder of the morning and the whole of the afternoon in fidgeting about from room to room, watching the clouds, cursing the rain, alternately ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte

... Dolly, what the Queen was like, and the King," said Rhoda, yawning. "And how many Maids of Honour were there? Just tell ...
— The Maidens' Lodge - None of Self and All of Thee, (In the Reign of Queen Anne) • Emily Sarah Holt

... soldiers looked down from their decks and laughed, Thousands of their seamen made mock at the mad little craft Running on and on, till delayed 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 ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various

... his fists into his eyes and stumbling against the gnarled bodies of laurel and rhododendron until, out in a clear sunny space, he dropped on a thick, velvet mat of moss and sobbed himself to sleep. When he awoke, Jack was licking his face and he sat up, dazed and yawning. The sun was dropping fast, the ravines were filling with blue shadows, luminous and misty, and a far drowsy tinkling from the valley told him that cows were starting homeward. From habit, he sprang quickly to his feet, but, sharply conscious on ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox

... were subalterns belonging to a cavalry regiment. Desmond was a captain—a Dublin Fusilier; and Jim Linton completed the quartette; and they sat in a hole in the ground under the floor of an officers' barrack in a Westphalian prison-camp. The yawning opening in front of them represented five months' ceaseless work, night after night. It was the ...
— Captain Jim • Mary Grant Bruce

... bathed the wound and bandaged it afresh. His face was very grave as he examined the unconscious lad's skin and pulse. "He has a high fever," he declared anxiously. "I thought yesterday from the way he was yawning and stretching that he was in for an attack of swamp fever. With a dose of it on top of this hole in his leg it is likely to go hard with the poor lad. I'd give a sight now for some brandy and quinine." He glanced up at Walter's haggard face. "You get to bed this minute ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely

... keep the spirited beasts under control; and I told him how dangerous it was, if he did not keep the track. But, poor boy, when he found himself in charge of all that fire, and looking down into yawning space, he was frightened, and no wonder; and the horses soon knew I was not behind them, took the child's measure, left the track, and wrought all this havoc; he let go the reins—I suppose he was afraid of being thrown out—and held on to the rail. But he has suffered for it, and my ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata

... sleepy," she said, and yawning in my face she tumbled herself back into the blanket and ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith

... woodwork of the bookcases, where Fox's "Lives of the Martyrs" nestled happily beside "The Whole Duty of Man." I seem to see the wide eyes of the Negro wander past the Bishop's broadcloth to where the swinging glass doors of the cabinet glow in the sunlight. A little blue fly is trying to cross the yawning keyhole. He marches briskly up to it, peers into the chasm in a surprised sort of way, and rubs his feelers reflectively; then he essays its depths, and, finding it bottomless, draws back again. The dark-faced priest ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois

... world with its light and its air, its purifying storms and lightnings: it is the darkened Italian palace, with its wrought-iron bars preventing escape; its embroidered carpets muffling the foot steps; its hidden, suddenly yawning trapdoors; its arras-hangings concealing masked ruffians; its garlands of poisoned flowers; its long suites of untenanted darkened rooms, through which the wretch is pursued by the half-crazed murderer; while below, in the cloistered court, the clanking armour and stamping horses, and above, in ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee

... social converse, which is so natural, and so amiable at the same time keeps him eternally in a state of fidgetty restlessness, which precludes all possibility of serious and persevering labour. Only think of the horrors of a house without a queen—Yawning servants, negligent housekeepers, extorting tradespeople,—these and a thousand other annoyances, for which you have no relief, because you cannot stoop to meddle or make in such transactions—are the agitations which perpetually ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 275, September 29, 1827 • Various

... the Cave of Darkness. Its outer walls rose high and cliff-like from the great Plain of Ash, and a yawning opening led off to its dark ...
— The Shadow Witch • Gertrude Crownfield

... said impulsively, she would so perfect her plot; "and you, my dear little strawberry blondes, with Sir Peter and little Tilton, to whom I owe a sugar-plum, for taking care of Blanche," who yawning said— ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny

... me say this, and saw that I was in a difficulty; and as one person when another yawns in his presence catches the infection of yawning from him, so did he seem to be driven into a difficulty by my difficulty. But as he had a reputation to maintain, he was ashamed to admit before the company that he could not answer my challenge or determine the question at issue; ...
— Charmides • Plato

... cover the entire floor of the valley a lakelet of very clear water not over a quarter of a mile from edge to edge, but very deep. Upon the far side, a little back and close under the overhanging cliffs, there was a great, jagged-mouthed, yawning hole, of a type not uncommon in this part of the western country, from which heavy, noxious gases drifted sometimes when the wind caught them up, gases which for the most part thickened and made deadly the dark interior. There were skeletons to be seen dimly by daylight down there, ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory

... sort which recalls that soul-harrowing legend of the man hung up in an iron cage above a yawning precipice, from under whose madly shifting feet one plank after another is withdrawn from the cage's bottom, till no spot is left for him to stand ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green

... Brown slept could be heard a sort of grunting, stretching, yawning sound. That was the little boy waking up. He heard what his sister ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue at Aunt Lu's City Home • Laura Lee Hope

... at the gate is whispering quick to Miss Dorothy, who has turned white. I stood as stiff as stone. I didn't even breathe. But out of the corner of my eye I could see my father licking his pink chops, and yawning just a ...
— The Boy Scout and Other Stories for Boys • Richard Harding Davis

... out into the fresh morning. Everything was dripping and soggy, but the sun was going to shine, and dry the world off. Together they trudged through the wetness, into the village. Other gold seekers were trooping down to the river, and the villagers, yawning and weary-eyed after the dance, were watching them, and collecting money ...
— Gold Seekers of '49 • Edwin L. Sabin

... a sudden commotion in the apartment. A sequence of curious noises thoroughly awoke her. The unaccustomed sight of three other girls in the room in which she slept caused her to sit bolt upright. The girl, Miss Impett, to whom she had already spoken, was sitting on her bed, yawning as she pulled off her stockings. Another, a fine, queenly-looking girl, in evening dress, was sitting on a chair with her hands pressed to her stomach; her eyes were rolling as if she were in pain. The third girl, also ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte

... stable, boys, and come in," he called, laughing heartily. Then he hurried off to the gun-room. He passed Mrs. Ulrich coming downstairs yawning prodigiously; he called to her to wait for him ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds

... service with a joy unknown to him for years. He had come to it from the reading of his Bible instead of the reading of the morning paper, and from prayer instead of from thoughts of his business or a yawning stroll through his library. His mind was receptive of the best things in the service. He entered into it with the solemn feeling ...
— Robert Hardy's Seven Days - A Dream and Its Consequences • Charles Monroe Sheldon

... yawning in the middle as if tired of being out so late, set a crumbly horn past the edge of his little skylight. Her straggling, pallid rays fell on something white on Kit's bed. He put out his hand, and it went into a cold wreath of snow up ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett

... things down the gemonies(*) of the devils of hell, impudently denied the existence of Good and Evil, blasphemed Jesus, and exalted Judas. And the most infamous of all, the jackal of darkness, the stinking beast, the Arian full of corruption and death, opened his mouth like a yawning sepulchre. My Thais, thou hast seen these filthy snails crawling towards thee and defiling thee with their sticky sweat; thou hast seen others, like brutes, sleeping under the heels of their slaves; thou hast seen them coupling like ...
— Thais • Anatole France

... was the Health Insurance Bill, but not until a few Independent Liberals, led by Captain WEDGWOOD BENN, had been rebuked for their obstructive tactics by Mr. MYERS and Mr. NEIL MACLEAN of the Labour Party. As the small hours grew larger this split in the Progressive ranks developed into a yawning chasm, and the Government got a third Bill passed before the weary ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 19, 1920 • Various

... house had been stripped. All the rooms were cold and bare, and in the rear a huge shell had exploded leaving yawning gaps in the walls, through which the snow was driving fast. ...
— The Hosts of the Air • Joseph A. Altsheler

... carried it off, weighted it, and hung it up on hooks in the auction room. Florent, with his face close to the grating, stood gazing at the rows of hanging carcasses, at the ruddy sheep and oxen and paler calves, all streaked with yellow fat and sinews, and with bellies yawning open. Then he passed along the sidewalk where the tripe market was held, amidst the pallid calves' feet and heads, the rolled tripe neatly packed in boxes, the brains delicately set out in flat baskets, ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola

... adventure, with good stories and poetry, with enjoyable and sensible parlor games such as authors, checkers, chess, charades, and with music and singing, will help you more with your lessons next day than two hours of listless yawning ...
— A Handbook of Health • Woods Hutchinson

... neither pleased nor edified by the services conducted in the gorgeous side chapels; they certainly seemed but a mechanical form of prayer, little less than sacrilegious; the bishops, priests, and choir hastening to get through the formula—those who were not yawning taking snuff. Indeed, there was a dreadful absence of real Christian humility and reverence. One day we arrived in time to witness a High Church ceremonial—it was the anniversary of St. Peter. Cardinal Howard officiated instead of the Pope, who had ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux

... told the silent story of a claim, while in other places the smouldering remains of a camp-fire alone bespoke primitive living. Yet every where along that upper terrace, where in places the seductive gold streak lay half uncovered to the sun, were those same yawning holes leading far down beneath the surface; about them grouped the puny figures of men performing the labors of Hercules under the ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish

... was rapidly gaining upon her, and she, in agony of soul, had given herself up for lost, when, by one of those miracles which were frequent in those days, especially in the country of Notre Dame de Roc-Amadour, the mule, by giving a vigorous stamp with one of his hind-legs, kicked a yawning gulf in the earth, which he, however, lightly passed over with his burden, while the wicked pursuer, unable to check his steed in time, ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker

... in the course of the afternoon the boys took their turn in going up and helping to bring down wounded men. As the time went on several yawning gaps appeared in the walls. The court-yard was strewn with fragments of masonry, and the pages were ordered to keep under shelter of the wall of the castle unless summoned on duty. Indeed, the court-yard had now become a more dangerous station than the wall itself; for not only did ...
— By England's Aid • G. A. Henty

... four bearers for the ten or twelve miles' journey up the mountains, with additional coolies to carry your luggage. For half the distance you follow ordinary country roads, but during the last few miles the path, though well constructed, is very steep in some places, while in others it overhangs yawning valleys, where you instinctively grip the sides of your chair and fervently hope the ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready

... Regent from her place of danger; and with this view a signal of distress was made and a gun fired with a red-hot poker from the galley. Its detonation awoke the sleepers. Door after door was opened, and in the grey light of the morning fisher after fisher was seen to come forth, yawning and stretching himself, nightcap on head. Fisher after fisher, I wrote, and my pen tripped; for it should rather stand wrecker after wrecker. There was no emotion, no animation, it scarce seemed any interest; not a hand was raised; but all callously awaited the harvest of the sea, and ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson

... keep happening,' said Lucy, yawning; 'it seems only a few minutes since supper. And yet here we ...
— The Magic City • Edith Nesbit

... Manisty—wondering where was emotion, sympathy. Not a trace of them! Of all their party he alone was obviously and hideously bored by the long wait. He leant back in his chair, with folded arms, staring at the ceiling—yawning—fidgetting. At last he took out a small Greek book from his pocket, and hung over it in a moody absorption. Once only, when a procession of the inferior clergy went by, he looked at it closely, turning afterwards to Mrs. Burgoyne with the emphatic ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... of the left-hand pocket of his trousers, and placed it in the right-hand receptacle of the same garment. Nevertheless, he was continually detecting himself yawning or dozing, as though "the idol of his existence" was a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, September 12, 1841 • Various

... the dear pleasures of the velvet plain, The painted Tablets, deal't and deal't again Cards, with what rapture, and the polish'd die The yawning chasm of indolence supply. Then to the Dance and make the sober moon Witness of joys that shun the sight of noon. Blame cynic if you can, quadrille or ball, The snug close party, or the splendid hall, "Where night down stooping from her ebon ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan

... a yawning cavity which now I perceived to exist in the wall. I hurried after him, and found myself upon roughly fashioned stone steps in a very low and narrow descending passage. Over ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer

... of the shining beams of light which fell from Greyfell's gleaming mane. On the eighth day they came to the open country and to the hills, where the land was covered with black bowlders and broken by yawning chasms. And no living thing was seen there, not even an insect, nor a blade of grass; and the silence of the grave was over all. And the earth was dry and parched, and the sun hung above them like ...
— The Story of Siegfried • James Baldwin

... morning Bertie was late for breakfast, and came in yawning rather ostentatiously. Judith protested good-humoredly: "Lie in bed late or yawn, but you can't want to do both. Why, it is eleven hours since you went up to bed!" This was perfectly true, but not so much to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various

... chasm—into itself it drew The flood, and swallowed up the fallow waves, The struggling sea—the abyss devoured it all. 1590 Yet not the waves alone it swallowed up; But fourteen men, worst caitiffs of the throng, Went headlong to destruction with the flood Under the yawning earth. Then sore afraid Was many a heart at that calamity; They feared the slaughter both of men and wives, A yet more wretched season of distress, When once those sin-stained cruel murderers, Those warriors fierce, plunged ...
— Andreas: The Legend of St. Andrew • Unknown

... showery west, The mighty kings of three fair realms are laid; Once foes, perhaps, together now they rest, No slaves revere them, and no wars invade: Yet frequent now, at midnight's solemn hour, 150 The rifted mounds their yawning cells unfold, And forth the monarchs stalk with sovereign power, In pageant robes, and wreath'd with sheeny gold, And on their twilight ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins

... and bristling with shoulder-shrugs, the smith rushes at his fire and pulls the bellows-chain, his yawning shoes making him limp like Vulcan. At each pull the bellows send spouting from the dust-filled throat of the furnace a cutting blue comet, lined with crackling and dazzling white, ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse

... proposition. But that man as a thinking being has descended from the lower animals is a different matter, concerning which opinion is by no means in unison. Even among scientists some degree of difference of opinion exists, and such a radical evolutionist as Alfred Russell Wallace finds here a yawning gap in the line of descent, and is inclined to look upon the intellect of man as a direct gift from the realm of spirits. His explanation, it is true, is more difficult than the problem itself. There are ...
— Man And His Ancestor - A Study In Evolution • Charles Morris

... pleasure which you can now prepare for your Sovereign. Therefore, as the Flaminian Way is furrowed by the action of torrents, join the yawning chasms by the broadest of bridges; clear away the rough woods which choke the sides of the highway; procure the stipulated number of post-horses, and see that they have all the points which are required in ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)

... weariness is our poor life, What misery! Day comes, day goes, and ever Is seen, is heard one thing alone; one sees Only black cassocks, only hears the bell. Yawning by day you wander, wander, nothing To do; you doze; the whole night long till daylight The poor monk lies awake; and when in sleep You lose yourself, black dreams disturb the soul; Glad that they sound the bell, that with a crutch They rouse you. No, I ...
— Boris Godunov - A Drama in Verse • Alexander Pushkin

... rubbed their foreheads against certain gratings, through which a tantalizing glimpse might be had of the fine things that were going on within. Had they but known it, it might all have been seen, holy of holies, head-wagging priest, idle yawning assistant, with legs stretched out, half asleep, mumblement, jumblement and all, from a little back window in a passage opening from that Calvary gallery upstairs. From thence at least did these profane eyes look down and see all the ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope

... depend upon the sight of buildings?" said Cecilia, when, turning towards her companion, she perceived him yawning, with such evident inattention to her answer, that not chusing to interrupt his reverie, she turned ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney

... his grave were yawning before him. He had forgotten that his carriage could not possibly have returned so soon; and now he stood alone on the perron of the palace, staring up and down the street in the vain hope of concealing himself in a fiacre from the gaze of the curious. No sentinel saluted him, no soldier ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach

... Forno Glacier, the Diavolezza Route, and the rest of the stately panorama of snow capped peaks, blue lakes, and narrow valleys,—valleys which began with picturesque chalets, dun colored cattle, and herb laden pastures, and ended in the yawning mouths of ice rivers whence issued the milky white streams that dashed through the lower gorges,—they passed before her eyes as she read till she was dazzled ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy

... important did—and Mr. and Mrs. Wetherall's circle was so large that God was included in their visiting-list. They appeared, therefore, punctual and resigned, with the air of people bound for a dull "At Home," and after them Hilda and Muriel straggled, yawning and pinning each other's veils and ribbons as they came. They had promised Lily to go to church with her, they declared, and Lily was such a dear old duck that they didn't mind doing it to please her, though they couldn't ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton

... in the path in which her slavering aggressors were slowly forcing her, a huge stone slab in the temple floor had begun to tilt up as if it were a trapdoor raised by an invisible hand. Within the yawning opening, Kirby caught a glimpse of stone steps winding ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, December 1930 • Various

... mother," answered Felipe, who was leaning, as he spoke, against Ramona's open window, his arms crossed behind him. Stretching them out, and back and forth a few times, yawning idly, he said, "This heat is intolerable!" Then he sauntered leisurely down the veranda steps into the garden-walk, and seated himself on the bench under the ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson

... hunters, who are lowered by a rope to the nests of sea-birds, built on some inaccessible cliff? Hanging between heaven and earth they sway;—above, the craggy rock, o'er which the single cord is strained that holds them fast; below, a yawning chasm, whose jagged depth would be a fearful grave to him who should fall. You and I would never dream of bird-nesting under such circumstances. I can see you shudder, even now, at the bare idea. Yet do we not sometimes hang ourselves over cliffs from which ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various

... moved by one common impulse, declare him three times running, and in stentorian voice, to be this "jolly good fellow"? So say all of them. We have always listened with the most intense pleasure to the brilliant speech of our friend who has just sat down. When you thought we were yawning, we were drinking ...
— Idle Ideas in 1905 • Jerome K. Jerome

... Household over the ridge and furrow risking the steadiness of his wrist and the keenness of his eye by any such additional tempting of Providence, and went off itself in various directions, with good-night iced drinks, yawning considerably like most ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]

... exchanged the customary bows; the doctor alone did not move as much as an eyelash; he sat down yawning on the grass, as much as to say, 'I'm not here for expressions of chivalrous courtesy.' Herr von Richter proposed to Herr 'Tshibadola' that he should select the place; Herr 'Tshibadola' responded, moving his tongue with difficulty—'the wall' within him had completely ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev

... people. I don't see how things can be wrong unless they hurt somebody, and we don't want to hurt anybody; and what's more, we jolly well couldn't if we tried. Let's get the Ingoldsby Legends. There's a thing about Abra-cadabra there,' said Cyril, yawning. 'We may as well play at magic. Let's be Knights Templars. They were awfully gone on magic. They used to work spells or something with a goat and a goose. Father ...
— The Phoenix and the Carpet • E. Nesbit

... whistle, and then rose to his feet, yawning widely. "So Father didn't balk the business so badly after all!" he said, and then went ...
— The Adventurous Seven - Their Hazardous Undertaking • Bessie Marchant

... on the overhanging edge Of the nearest cliff's high summit, eyes the small and slippery ledge Just beyond the yawning chasm which his daring feet must leap; Stands there bold and free and fearless, taking inward at a sweep All the fearful odds and chances, the deep chasm he must cross— Calculates with hope of winning, ...
— Indian Legends of Minnesota • Various

... never, for if once the light were out it would be impossible. With a gulp in my throat I sprang up, seized the iron edge of the top, and swung myself panting on to it. I writhed in face downwards, and found myself looking straight into the terrible eyes and yawning jaws of the cat. Its fetid breath came up into my face like the steam from some ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle

... the scouts were yawning at a prodigious rate it was now concluded that the time had come to crawl under their blankets and get some sleep. This going to bed was never a very long-drawn-out operation with the scouts when in the open. Each boy would remove his shoes, after taking off his leggings, ...
— Boy Scouts on Hudson Bay - The Disappearing Fleet • G. Harvey Ralphson

... tilted up on end. Just as we left town, two narrow and lofty parallel rocks suggested a gate-way. Further down, a mass was worn out into a sharp column, a little separated from the rock mass behind. On the right, was the precipice, ever abrupt, and sometimes the almost vertical bank of a yawning chasm. After an hour and a half over the fairly good road, we came to a grand ascent. It was magnificent, though difficult. In some spots the road was muddy, and at others it was a series of rough ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr

... fell to watching the faces of my fellow-gamblers with idle interest. This stake would decide between life and death for me, but I did not feel it. My passion had fallen upon an anti-climax, and I was even yawning when the murmur of many voices, and a small pile of gold and silver at my side, announced that I ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... the ice; it groaned like one in pain, And yawning chasms opened wide, and closed and yawned again; And sheets of silver heaved on high until they ...
— Ballads of a Cheechako • Robert W. Service

... the day were being discussed. There were present a number of elderly married ladies and spinsters, together with the wives and daughters of clerks of the administration, all in European costume, fanning and yawning. Among the men, who, by their manners, showed their position, as did the women, was a man advanced in age, small and one-armed, who was treated with distinction, and ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal

... fool-flyers in aeroplanes,—in short, no fashionable jabberer of social inanities could have beaten me in what average persons call 'common-sense talk,'—talk which resulted after a while in the usual vagueness of attention accompanied by smothered yawning. I was resolved not to lift the line of thought 'up in the air' in the manner whereof I had often been accused, but to keep it level with the ground. So that when we left Tobermory, where we had anchored for a couple of days, the limits of the yacht were becoming rather cramped and narrow ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli

... glories of an ancient line, I set my Tara's tears at naught, I met Sugriva and we fought. O Rama, till this fatal morn I held that thou wouldst surely scorn To strike me as I fought my foe And thought not of a stranger's blow, But now thine evil heart is shown, A yawning well with grass o'ergrown. Thou wearest virtue's badge,(588) but guile And meanest sin thy soul defile. I took thee not for treacherous fire, A sinner clad in saint's attire; Nor deemed thou idly wouldst profess The show ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI

... beheld that hero looking like the moon encircled by white clouds. The great bowmen amongst the Srinjayas headed by Dhrishtadyumna, (beholding Bhishma) looked like little animals when they would behold a mighty yawning lion. Indeed, all the combatants headed by Dhrishtadyumna repeatedly trembled in fear. These, O king, were the eleven splendid divisions of thy army. So also the seven divisions belonging to the Pandavas were protected by foremost of men. Indeed, the two ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... west, and its several tributaries could be made out in the landscape by the contours of the ridges. Barranca de Cobre is known in its course by different names. Near the mine of Urique (the Tarahumare word for barranca), it is called Barranca de Urique, and here its yawning chasm is over 4,000 feet deep. Even the intrepid Jesuit missionaries at first gave up the idea of descending into it, and the Indians told them that only the birds knew how deep it was. The traveller as he stands at the edge ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz

... my hopes begin to fade; The yawning gulf has rent them Twixt finding subjects ready made And having to invent them. Shattered my foolish dreams recede And pass into the distance, And I must search for one in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 7th, 1920 • Various

... it seemed the wise move to go to bed and get some sleep while there was time. The Duchess was roused from her dreams by means of a piece of ice from one of the tumblers; checks were paid; and the company poured out, yawning and chattering, into the sunlight of the ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse

... said Second-Lieut. St. John, "isn't in it." And then, because his watch had ended, he handed over to another yawning subaltern and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Nov 21, 1917 • Various

... legacy of knowledge when Norfolk was decimated? Where was it when the blue flies were buzzing over the coffins of the unburied dead piled up in the cemetery of New Orleans, at the edge of the huge trenches yawning to receive them? ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... yawning, when he knocked at her door. "There wasn't no call for you to come," she said, inhospitably; "the medicine ...
— Flower of the Dusk • Myrtle Reed

... bored me to the very verge of yawning in my lover's countenance. I, too, had no idea but that it ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell

... incredulous glance remained with her as something curious, and she was not unprepared to be challenged when, the next morning, she hurried down the hall, drawing on her gloves. Clara's door did open, but the lady herself, yawning lightly on the threshold, had this time no questions for her. "Remember the luncheon," she advised, "and by the way, Ella wants us to sit in their box to-night. Don't forget ...
— The Coast of Chance • Esther Chamberlain

... up the coast we literally hugged the shore; only during the hours when we were crossing the yawning mouth of the Gulf of California were we for a single moment out of sight of land. I know not if this was a saving in time and distance, and therefore a saving in fuel and provender; or if our ship, the John L. Stevens, was thought to be overloaded and unsafe, and ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard

... dawning I saw a Counsel yawning, And heard him say, in accents that were anything but gay, As sadly he was grinding At a meikle multiplepoinding,— The days o' my ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton

... so precise and his manner so perfect that Bertha was puzzled and a little embarrassed by them. It seemed abnormal to have a hired servant so polished, so thoughtful. She dressed hurriedly, while the Captain yawned and talked between his yawning. "That yellow chap is sure handy. I wish I'd had him before; 'twould have saved you a power o' work and worry. ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland

... of yawning, speak while your throat is open. Make this open-feeling habitual when speaking—we say make because it is a matter of resolution and of practise, if your vocal organs are healthy. Your tone passages may be ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein

... proceedings was Nan, and she saw jail yawning for her just beyond the superintendent's office, whether the lost lavalliere was found in her ...
— Nan Sherwood's Winter Holidays • Annie Roe Carr

... twenty years in an absolutely empty theatre, and if she did not go mad under the ordeal, she would perhaps turn out very like the Lady of Greifenstein. The stage was always set; the scenery was always of the best and newest; the vacant boxes and the yawning pit were brilliantly lighted; the costumes were by the best makers; the stage manager was punctual and in his place; the curtain went up every day for the performance; but Frau von Greifenstein's theatre was silent and untenanted, not a voice broke the stillness, not a ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford

... had passed had been very rotten, and Me Dain had gone through one hole up to his arm-pits. He had only been saved from a fall into the yawning gulf below by the promptness of Jack, who had flung himself on his knees and whipped his hands under the Burman's arms, and held him up. Warned by this misadventure, they moved slowly and carefully along the narrow track which now lay ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore

... that their golden idols had feet of clay, and wavering wills strengthened by the salutary courage and integrity of one indomitable man. Another hymn, and a benediction that seemed like a fit grace after meat, and then the crowd poured out; not yawning, thinking of best clothes, or longing for dinner, but waked up, full of talk, and eager to do something to redeem the ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott

... early in the Blue Bedroom to see the morning made. He threw back the tarpaulin and sat up, yawning; with every line of his face crinkled up, ready ...
— Copper Streak Trail • Eugene Manlove Rhodes

... below." They changed situations.—But even upon the barrel, Bertram began to feel his powers sinking. He clung as firmly as he could. But the storm grew more and more terrific: and many times he felt faint in his wild descents from the summit of some mounting wave into the yawning chasm below: Nature is benign even in the midst of her terrors: and, when horrors have been accumulated till man can bear no more, then his sufferings are relieved for a time by insensibility. On awakening it is true that the horrors will return; but the heart has gained fresh strength ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. I. • Thomas De Quincey

... Thurwell returned from her party, and was sitting in her room in a very becoming dressing gown, yawning and thinking over the events of the evening, there was a little tap at the door, and Helen entered, ...
— The New Tenant • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... at the mighty deeds of the place; and when the hourly quotations of the price of stocks are the same, the place is silent, and only a few individuals, with faces which grin but cannot smile, are seen crawling in and out, or standing yawning in the court, with their hands in their breeches' pockets. If, however, the quotations fluctuate, and the Royal Exchange, where most of the leading men of the money market lounge, be full of bustling and rumours, and especially if characters, with eyes like basilisks, ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury

... on account of a degree of ridicule carelessly thrown on his deceased father, in Goldsmith's History of Animated Nature, in which that celebrated mathematician is represented as being subject to fits of yawning so violent as to render him incapable of proceeding in his lecture; a story altogether unfounded, but for the publication of which the law would give no reparation[45]. This led us to agitate the ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... some steps leading up to it. By this entrance Mr. Dionysius Cram led them into a small jailer's lodge, with a table and some wooden chairs, in the side of which, opposite to the entrance, was a strong movable grate, between the bars of which might be seen a yawning sort of chasm leading into the heart of ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various

... off without the spectators evincing the slightest interest. The poor little darlings were pulling serious faces; some of the tinier mites fell fast asleep, sucking their thumbs. The older children turned their heads and smiled towards their parents, who were themselves yawning behind their hands. There was thus a general feeling of relief when the great Morizot decided to ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola

... French, as they do in the novels. They talked about each others' houses, and characters, and families—just as the Joneses do about the Smiths. Becky's former acquaintances hated and envied her; the poor woman herself was yawning in spirit. "I wish I were out of it," she said to herself. "I would rather be a parson's wife and teach a Sunday school than this; or a sergeant's lady and ride in the regimental waggon; or, oh, how much gayer it would be to wear spangles and trousers and dance before a ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray

... the cases of which would make an explosive noise, and the audible yawning that occasionally sounded near him, the minister was enabled to carry his sermon through to the close, helped immeasurably by those aforesaid earnest eyes that never turned their gaze from his face, nor let their owners' attention flag for ...
— Divers Women • Pansy and Mrs. C.M. Livingston

... constituted the furniture. Scrupulous neatness reigned everywhere, but the air was burdened with the odor of carbolic acid, and even at mid-day was chill as the breath of a tomb. Where the doors were thrown open, they resembled the yawning jaws of rifled graves; and when closed, the woful inmates peering through the black lattice seemed an incarnation of ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... veiled. She was clear as day, yet melting, merged, elusive, like the night; and in her glance, in her voice, was that mingled brightness and shadow. When she had given them their tea she left her friends, taking her toasted little dog, languid and yawning, under her arm, and, at a sharp yelp from this petted individual, his paw struck by the opening of the door, they heard her exclaiming in contrition over him, "Darling lamb! did his wicked mother ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick

... his lips, 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

... with bayonets blunted, Dunlap all the while retreating, Huffman all the while pursuing, Till a wide ravine arrested, Stopped their wild, ferocious progress. Not for long the pause, however; Dunlap, lithe of limb and active, Sprang across the yawning chasm, Huffman, chasing, fell within it, Rolling down the steep embankment. Then young Dunlap, still escaping, Running from his checked pursuer, Saw before him in the pathway Another hand-to-hand encounter. It was Stein, the burly Colonel Of the conquering ...
— The Song of Lancaster, Kentucky - to the statesmen, soldiers, and citizens of Garrard County. • Eugenia Dunlap Potts

... boats, and ordered them to send their gang of labourers on shore. He then gave the accustomed raps on the deck, and called "all hands" in the ship. In a minute the men began to appear, yawning and stretching their arms—for no one had thrown aside his clothes—most of them launching their sea-jokes right and left, with as much indifference as if they lay quietly in the port to which they were bound. After some ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper

... preference, I should dread you, as much as Satan does Michael. But is there not room enough in our respective regions? Go on—it will soon be my turn to forgive. To-day I dine with Mackintosh and Mrs. Stale—as John Bull may be pleased to denominate Corinne—whom I saw last night, at Covent Garden, yawning over the humour ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore

... only saw my young love, Like flowers in the sun — Her hands like waxen petals, Where yawning poppies run. ...
— Young Adventure - A Book of Poems • Stephen Vincent Benet

... force to his words, he checked himself in an involuntary imitation of two half-length stretching and yawning figures on the mantel-shelf, who were represented as in one eternal state of weariness from the waist upwards; and hummed a fragment of a song. It was a Bacchanalian song, something about a Sparkling Bowl. He sang it with an assumption of a Devil-may-care voice, ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens

... his sleep, rather noisily, and the movement knocked a book to the floor from the foot of his berth. The noise of that awoke Hyde, and King pretended to begin to wake, yawning and rolling on his back (that being much the safest position an unarmed man can take and much the most ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy

... not daring to search for what he feared to find. His horse, standing with legs spread wide and drooping head, heaved a great sob of exhaustion from its panting flanks. Nicanor, staring ahead of him with gloomy eyes, roused, picked up his loose reins, and rode down the hill. At the yawning doorway, where no porter challenged, he swung himself from the saddle and went into the great central court. Here was grass uprooted, a fountain wrecked; marble walks were stained with blood and the marks of feet; plants were torn up and broken. Through empty room after empty room ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor

... have said, "hoping for a yawn" for anything that could have been offered me; but the young woman who stood for Mrs. Ascher's Psyche must have longed for that relief. The attitude in which she was posed suggested yawning all the time, and we all know how fatal it is to think ...
— Gossamer - 1915 • George A. Birmingham

... we had come to a dead halt, and a prolonged silence followed. Our sailor boys pulled lustily at the oars; yet the little boat seemed to crawl through yawning waves, and, as usual, every moment was an hour of terrible suspense. Then the captain, the most anxious among us all, made a trumpet of his hands and shouted: "Here, Pete, old boy! Here, Pete, you black rascal!" At the sound of his voice the swimmer suddenly turned and struck out for the ship ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains to Alaska • Charles Warren Stoddard

... "Why, what is the matter?" cried he; "it does not work at all." I called his attention to the fact that he was not inhaling properly, and showed him how it ought to be done; but the Emperor still continued his performances, which were like some peculiar kind of yawning. Tired out by his fruitless efforts at last, he told me to light it for him, which I did, and instantly handed it back to him. But he had hardly taken a whiff when the smoke, which he did not know how to breathe out again, filled his throat, got ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... say that I must be yawning myself half to death and longing for the fleshpots of Morristown? If I could have my own way I would build an unpretentious cottage here, but of course I would insist on a real bath tub. And I would come and spend the most pleasant months, and cultivate my dear friends the populace, ...
— Sweetapple Cove • George van Schaick

... 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 ...
— Erewhon Revisited • Samuel Butler

... been to the theater lately?" and she would question gently, "The theater?" as much as to say, "I've heard that word somewhere before," until the conscientious conversationalist, rushing from futility to futility, would be finally engulfed in some yawning banality and sink out of ...
— The Happiest Time of Their Lives • Alice Duer Miller

... conquering spirit of all-besetting drowsiness that attacks us at sundry times and places. It is in vain that we lengthen our limbs into an awakening stretch—that we yawn with the expressive suavity of yawning no more—that we dislocate our knuckle bones, and ruffle the symmetry of our visage, with a manual application; like the cleft blaze of a candle, drowsiness returns again. Well, then, what manner ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 266, July 28, 1827 • Various

... "O Eve! a bitter portion hast thou won us! Dost thou behold the yawning gulf of hell, sunless, insatiate? Thou mayest hear the groans that rise therefrom! The heavenly realm is little like that blaze of fire! Lo! fairest of all lands is this, which we, by God's grace, might have held hadst thou ...
— Codex Junius 11 • Unknown

... low. Soon there joined us Henry Green, who was the guide, Rebekah, Ethel, and Lily and Ruth Swain. We then followed the narrow and ascending path across Plantation Gulch, where on the left was a yawning precipice. ...
— Three Years in Tristan da Cunha • K. M. Barrow

... emerged from his cabin, yawning and stretching, the major continued: "I am on my way to visit our guests, or prisoners, as I suppose we must now call them, and want you to act as interpreter. Whether guests or prisoners, we must not allow them to starve, and if they are half as hungry as I am at this moment, they must feel ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore

... passed, Job amusing Jeremy with tales of his adventures and old sea-yarns and soon night had overtaken them again. This time the boy had the first nap. He was roused to take his watch when Job saw by the stars that it was eight bells, and, still yawning with sleep, the lad went to stand by the rail. Everything was quiet on the sea, and even the swell had died out, leaving a perfect calm. There was no moon. The boy's head sank on his breast and softly he slid to the deck. Drowsiness had overcome ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader

... foremost in the rush, he bayoneted the last Tagal at the Krupp guns in the river redoubt. It was his devoted bunky, Private Latrobe, who volunteered to carry the division commander's dispatch across the open rice field and the yawning ditches that separated the staff from the rest of the charging —teenth, and who died gloriously in the rush on the rebel works. Man after man of the woolly Westerners had been referred to by name while, but the Dudes had nothing to show but their wounded colonel's modest ...
— Found in the Philippines - The Story of a Woman's Letters • Charles King

... to feel some mighty propelling force under him; he rose high with the stern of the boat. Then the bow pitched down into a yawning hole. A long instant he and the boat slid down a glancing fall—then thunderous roar—furious contending wrestle—cold, yellow, ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey

... hoped for a return to reason, but behold, the world was cross! The reaction of the long excitement was felt, Gertrude fretted, and was unwell; Aubrey was pettish at his lessons; and Mary and Blanche were weary, yawning and inattentive; every straw was a burden, and ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge

... number 84 in the curving line of box-stalls at Latonia. Down the sweep of whitewashed stalls the upper doors were yawning wide, and from many of these openings, velvet black in the sunlight, sleek snaky ...
— Blister Jones • John Taintor Foote

... consequences of some rash folly. Fred had seen her in his boyhood knitting in the same way with the same, look on her face, when he had been thrown from his pony, or had fallen from his velocipede. He himself looked ill at ease and worried, as he lay on a sofa with his arm in a sling. He was yawning and counting the hours. From time to time his mother glanced at him. Her look was curious, and anxious, and loving, all at the same time. He pretended to be asleep. He did not like to see her watching him. His handsome masculine face, tanned that pale brown which tropical ...
— Jacqueline, v3 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)

... understanding and without the slightest sense of ambiguity; just as they do in Japan when the name of the common head of all families, the Mikado, is named. There must be one thing in Germany and it must be this thing, which is altogether out of reach of the yawning, blinking and grinning scepticism of the coffee-house, and of the belching and growling of the tavern. Any man who puts this thing aside in favour of his class-ideas, or his speculations in lard, or his dividends, or the demands of his Union, must understand ...
— The New Society • Walther Rathenau

... Jimmy Geary, the sexton's, an old tramp sat, grumbling, emptying the dirt and stones out of his huge dustbrown yawning boot. ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... had made his final camp overlooked the wildest of all that wild upland country. The pines had scattered and trooped around a beautiful park of grass that ended abruptly upon bare rock. Yellow crags towered above the rim, and under them a yawning narrow gorge, overshadowed from above, blue in its depths, split the end of the great plateau and opened out sheer into the head of the canyon, which, according to Creech, stretched away through that wilderness ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey

... prey upon their heart-strings, And the smart twinges, when the eye beholds the Lofty Judge frowning, and a flood of vengeance Rolling afore Him. Hopeless immortals! how they scream and shiver, While devils push them to the pit wide-yawning Hideous and gloomy, to receive them headlong Down ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum

... that I've been wanting so long! They sold it at auction, and the Paysons got it for forty-three hundred, and I was perfectly sick that Fred wouldn't bid! But now," said Linda, reverently, putting her arm about Josephine, who came yawning into the kitchen, in her blue wrapper, "now, if the Father spares me my girls and boys, and their daddy, I shall never ask anything happier than this! Pip's better, Jo," she said to the child, who was kissing her dreamily, over and over, "they put a tube in his throat ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris

... or to downright slipshod. It is true that the substance does not always correspond to the perfection of the form. There are frequent discontinuities of thought where the style is smoothest. He reminds one at times of those Alpine glaciers where an exquisitely rounded surface of snow conceals yawning crevasses beneath; and if one stops for a moment to think, one is apt to break through the crust with an ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen

... in his bed, tightly strapped as he was. The effects of the drug were wearing off. Sleepily he yawned—stretched, and blindly, his heavy eyes still closed, released the straps that held him in bed. Yawning widely he opened his eyes—with a sudden start sat upright—then, with an excellent imitation of an Indian on the warpath, he leaped from his bed, and started to run wildly across the floor. His eyes were raised to the place where the ceiling should have been—he called lustily in alarm—then ...
— The Black Star Passes • John W Campbell

... ye other men (would ye were men!) who are in league with traitors, ay, who are even worse than they, to do this accursed thing, know that this pit is yawning for you. Down—down—deeper—deeper—pressed to perdition by the curses of those who are to come after you, whom you wronged ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... of the morning came, chill and cheerless. Mistress Croale stirred, moved, crept up rather than rose to a sitting position, and stretched herself yawning. Gibbie had risen and stood over her. She caught sight of him; absolute terror distorted her sodden face; she stared at him, then stared about her, like one who had suddenly waked in hell. He took her by the arm. She obeyed, rose, and stood, fear conquering the ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald

... within perhaps hundreds of miles, when all is still as a church on the land, the storm that raves somewhere out upon the vast waste, will drive the waves in upon the shore with such fury that not even a lifeboat could make its way through their yawning hollows, and their fierce, shattered, ...
— The Seaboard Parish Volume 1 • George MacDonald

... west-winds blow. Let foemen's wives and children feel The gathering south-wind's angry roar, The black wave's crash, the thunder-peal, The quivering shore. So to the bull Europa gave Her beauteous form, and when she saw The monstrous deep, the yawning grave, Grew pale with awe. That morn of meadow-flowers she thought, Weaving a crown the nymphs to please: That gloomy night she look'd on nought But stars and seas. Then, as in hundred-citied Crete ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace

... shook his head as if incredulously, and was about to resume his occupation, when he was seized with a fit of yawning which prevented the bag being tied for ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... to attribute the manly bearing of British seamen, when the planks of their ship tremble under their feet, and the waves are yawning to swallow ...
— Narratives of Shipwrecks of the Royal Navy; between 1793 and 1849 • William O. S. Gilly

... stevedores trundled their heavy burdens over the gangplanks of the vessels that lay on either side, and great cranes and derricks, their giant claws seizing tons of merchandise at a time, swung creakingly overhead to disgorge their loads into yawning hatchways. ...
— Doubloons—and the Girl • John Maxwell Forbes

... escaped"—except the God-directed Argo: surely a sufficient warning. Then the second way also leads to two rocks, but of a different kind; at their bases in the sea are found Scylla, the monstrous sea-bitch, on one side, and Charybdis, the yawning maelstrom, on the other; between them Ulysses must pass with his ship ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider

... all tired and yawning. There's something about the motion of a cab or an omnibus that always makes me feel sleepy, and arter a time I closed my eyes and went off sound. I remember I was dreaming that I 'ad found a bag o' money, when the cab pulled up ...
— Sailor's Knots (Entire Collection) • W.W. Jacobs

... solitude I sanctified, and God: 'Twas here, by love of Wisdom brought, Her truest lore, Self-knowledge, first I sought; Devoted here my worldly wealth, To win my chosen sons immortal health. Midst these dun woods, and mountains steep, Midst the wild horrors of yon desert deep, Midst yawning caverns, wat'ry dells, Midst long, sequestered aisles, and peaceful cells, No passions fell distract the mind, To Nature, Silence, and Herself consign'd. In these still mansions who shall bide, 'Tis mine, with Heaven's appointment, ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford

... said, yawning openly. She kissed her uncle's cheek, and Aunt 'Mira returned with warmth the caress with which ...
— The Mission of Janice Day • Helen Beecher Long

... stone staircase, yawning under the colonnade; on the first landing an open doorway; within, a long corridor, doors of bedrooms on either side, and in a room at the far end a glimpse of a tablecloth. This was the hotel, the whole of it. ...
— By the Ionian Sea - Notes of a Ramble in Southern Italy • George Gissing

... now. The Exchange franchise is worth a lot of money. Besides," he concluded, yawning, "I don't know that they're any worse ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... back, and bidding my man follow with my tripod, I started off down the hill into Biaches. Then the signs of the German retreat began to fully reveal themselves. The ground was absolutely littered with the horrible wastage of war; roads were torn open, leaving great yawning gaps that looked for all the world like huge jagged wounds. On my right lay the Chateau of La Maisonnette. The ground there was a shambles, for numerous bodies in various stages of putrefaction lay about as ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins

... and as the doctor's wife had not made her appearance, Charlotte Stanhope and her brother were left together. He was sitting idly at the table, scrawling caricatures of Barchester notables, then yawning, then turning over a book or two, and evidently at a loss how to kill ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope

... he had never noticed how this opening dragged. Manders had never criticized it (one of the few things he hadn't tried to cut about); and it was dragging. In a moment people would be yawning and talking to one another; the pit would become noisy with its feet; already there was a rustle; if they would only look at the stage instead of trying to learn their programmes by heart! They should have done that before! And still the house was cold. . . . God ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna

... but a single moment, lords! (He goes from one soldier to another.) Do you remember when we climbed a mountain's rocky slope, a savage wild beast closely tracked our steps, and when you, frightened, fell into a yawning chasm, I rescued you, and saved your life? You were most grateful then. Have you forgotten it?—Jerome, we once were cast away upon the Danube's craggy shore; we braved the waves, and saved our lives; we were bold swimmers, and we helped each other well!—Christophe, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... were becoming as nothing in our sight. One thing alone called any of us to exertion. It was when some wretch, happier, perhaps, than we were, breathed his last, and the shrieks and wails of his relations or friends summoned us to commit his body to the ocean-grave, yawning to receive us all, the living as well as the dead. I must pass over that night. It was far more full of horrors than the last, except that the Mary, our only ark of safety, was still ...
— Peter the Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston

... steadily to the brighter side, and keeping ever in mind the happy hour which should reunite them to each other. Now, in silence, she bound together the last green boughs and put all in order for the night. Old Catherine had long since gone off, yawning and blinking, to bed, and Cicely, half-asleep, nodded over the dying fire. Only her mother watched her, with eyes of loving scrutiny, and Annis smiled brightly as she kissed the careworn face. "I shall not cry myself to sleep to-night," ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book I - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various

... Roger, yawning. "Let's turn in. Just the thought of facing those applicants tomorrow makes ...
— The Space Pioneers • Carey Rockwell

... as I'm concerned," went on Cartwright, yawning again, "it don't make no difference one way or another. Sour Creek ain't my town, and I don't care if it gets the ha-ha for having its jail busted open. Of course, after the birds have flown, the sheriff will ride hard after ...
— The Rangeland Avenger • Max Brand

... piece of work reaching her, for wind and waves were both against us and rowing difficult; the cutter at one moment being on the top of a mountainous billow and the next plunged deep down into a yawning valley of green water, the broken ridges of which curled over our gunwales on either hand, threatening to overwhelm us till we, rose ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson

... running dry beneath the span of an old dust-bepowdered bridge, without a bit of green, nothing save a few bushes, dying for want of moisture. Farther on, the mountain gorge of the Infernets showed its yawning chasm amidst tumbled rocks, struck down by lightning, a huge chaos, a wild desert, rolling stony billows as far as the eye could reach. Then came all sorts of well remembered nooks: the valley of Repentance, narrow and shady, a refreshing oasis amid calcined fields; ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola

... to do. He had crushed out the natural evil of him and denied the desires of the flesh, and changed his very nature to do good by Pippa's son: and it had all been of no use; it had all been spent in vain, as drowning seamen's cries for help are spent on angry winds and yawning waters. He had tried to follow God's will and to drive the tempter from him, for the boy's sake; and it had all been of no avail. Through the long score of years his vain sacrifices echoed dully by him as a dropt stone through the dark shaft ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida

... there's nothing much to do there to-night, save to eat supper," Jess said, yawning. "So much ozone ...
— The Girls of Central High in Camp - The Old Professor's Secret • Gertrude W. Morrison



Words linked to "Yawning" :   pandiculation, oscitant, reflex action, reflex, opened, open, yawn, innate reflex, inborn reflex, unconditioned reflex, oscitancy, inattentive, drowsy, reflex response, oscitance, instinctive reflex, physiological reaction



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