yawning
part of speech
verb (-ing form of yawn: yawn, yawns, yawned, yawning); adjective (yawning — wide open: a yawning gap)
meaning for a pupil
1) Opening your mouth wide and taking a deep breath without meaning to, usually because you are tired or bored. tree →
2) (adjective) Very wide and open, like a big gap or hole (a yawning gap, a yawning cave). tree →
sense in the lessons
In health and science lessons, yawning is a reflex — the body does it on its own, often when tired, bored or when others yawn (yawns are «catching» or contagious). Being always yawning in class can mean you need more sleep. Manners: cover your mouth when you yawn. In stories, a yawning character is sleepy or bored; a yawning cave is huge and dark. Phrases: stop yawning, yawning gap, cover your mouth.
examples
- Stop yawning — it's not bedtime yet! tree →
- Cover your mouth when you are yawning. tree →
- He was yawning all through the boring film. tree →
- Seeing someone yawn can make you start yawning too. tree →
- The children were yawning after the long day at the beach. tree →
- A yawning cave opened in the side of the hill. tree →
- There's a yawning gap between the two scores. tree →
note
Spelling: yawn, yawning, yawned. The «aw» sounds like «or» in British English. Scientists are still not completely sure why we yawn — one idea is that it helps cool the brain.
In the corpora
- Vivid example: in Manchester, Freya comes home from a sleepover yawning.
- Yawning, heavy eyes and clumsiness are signs of tiredness.
- Showing the whites of the eyes, lip licking and yawning when not tired are signs of a worried dog.
- Yawning, lip licking and turning the head away are calm-down signals that show a dog feels uneasy.
- Swallowing, yawning or chewing helps sore ears during landing, because it helps the pressure in your ears even out.
Trees and pragmatics
Every meaning and example of «yawning» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.