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Yawning   /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.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Yawning" Quotes from Famous Books



... Office, except himself, who would not have preferred that the cream of the personnel, men who had served in the regulars, who flocked into the ranks in response to his trumpet call to the nation, should have been devoted in the first instance to filling the yawning gaps that existed in the Territorial Forces, and to providing those forces with trained reservists to fill war wastage. Such a disposition of this very valuable material seemed preferable to absorbing it at the outset ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell

... the Board Room of the offices in Austin Friars. He had risen from the great roller-topped desk over between the windows, and walked now with a lethargic, tired step to and fro before the empty fireplace, yawning more than once, and stretching out his arms in the supreme gesture of fatigue. After a dozen listless rounds, something occurred to him. He moved with a certain directness of purpose to the cabinet in the corner, unlocked it, and poured out for himself a tumbler of brandy and soda. ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic

... other children and then to adults. Amongst the younger of those affected, ecstasy, catalepsy, and somnambulism were seen, and later, convulsions only; convulsive attacks returned several times a day. An attack usually began with yawning, restless movements, the aspects of fear passing into fury with violent and impulsive movements, with vociferations and cries that they were lost souls in hell, the mouth-piece of the devil, etc. These attacks would last from ten minutes to half an hour. A feature of this epidemic was the ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10

... Scylla and the Charybdis of fiction-writing may both be avoided. The realists gain nothing by hooting at the abuses of romance; and the romantics gain as little by yawning over realism at its worst. "The conditions"—to use a phase of Emerson's—"are hard but equal": and at their best, the realist, working inductively, and the romantic, working deductively, are equally able to present ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton

... to be a hell unto themselves. And nature seldom fails to avenge herself for the outrages suffered. She uses the flail of disease and remorse, of misery and disgust, and she scourges the culprit to the verge of the grave, often to the yawning pit of hell. ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton

... hallow'd ground! 145 Or thither,[49] where, beneath the 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 tombs aerial ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins

... bed, with her face buried in the pillow, the greater portion of the time from two o'clock until day. An uncontrollable horror prevented her from turning lest she should see the yawning mystery in the middle of the floor, or hear some awful sound from its unknown depths. The very shadows on the walls thrown up wildly by the expiring firelight were objects of grotesque terror. Never—never—in her whole youth of strange vicissitude, ...
— Capitola the Madcap • Emma D. E. N. Southworth

... the doctor went with them, 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

... has bravely defended, when unequal to aggressive action,—so the possession, defence, and even the loss, of New York, as an incident of a campaign, were very different from an effort to wrest the city from the grasp of a British garrison, under cover of yawning broadsides. ...
— Bay State Monthly, Vol. I, No. 3, March, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various

... Parade, with its throngs of beaux—veritable beaux, with Beau Nash at their head—wigged, caned, and snuff-boxed, and belles with trains borne by black boys, cambric caps and aprons, and abundance of velvet patches. In and out of its yawning doorway strutted fine gentlemen, chaplains, and wits, while grooms, public and private, swarmed round the house. Its broad stairs and low wide corridors, traversed by the more private company, led to sitting rooms of all degrees, panelled with oak or lined with cedar, with worked worsted ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler

... 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

... down inside, is most impressive. The public are not admitted to this gallery, for fear, the keeper told me, it would become the scene of suicides; people unable to withstand the terrible fascination would leap into the yawning gulf. But, with the privilege usually accorded to Americans, I stepped down into the narrow circle, and, leaning over the balustrade, coolly looked the horrible ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs

... still sitting before her desk, with a sickly, waning lamplight gleaming over her pallid face. And to-day, as she looked out on the flying clouds, and listened to the mournful wail of the rushing gale, she seemed to stand upon the verge of a yawning chaos. What did she believe? She knew not. Old faiths had crumbled away; she stood in a dreary waste, strewn with the wreck of creeds and systems; a silent desolation! And with Richter's Christ she exclaimed: "Oh! how is each so solitary ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans

... defiance of dangers when liberty is to be won, that old ocean, with its wild storms, and fierce monsters, and its yawning deep, and even the superadded terrors of armed vessels ever hovering around the island, are barriers altogether ineffectual to prevent escape. The western side of Guadaloupe, along which we passed, is hilly ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... Well, well, no saying what a man may come to! I suppose you have never seen Waife, nor that fellow you say was so well-dressed and good-looking, and who sold you the Phenomenon, nor the Phenomenon herself—Eh?" added Losely, stretching himself, and yawning, as he saw ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... provident for the bird and the fish alone. Isthmuses are especially naked and rugged; the wave, which wears and mines them on either side, reduces them to the simplest form. Everywhere there were sharp relief ridges, cuttings, frightful fragments of torn stone, yawning with many points, like the jaws of a shark; breaknecks of wet moss, rapid slopes of rock ending in the sea. Whosoever undertakes to pass over an isthmus meets at every step misshapen blocks, as large as houses, in the forms of shin-bones, ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo

... is often done! If I could but have been carried on some one's knee and have been seated in a coach! But one cannot have all one desires. I have not been able to do so, neither with barking nor with yawning." ...
— The Ice-Maiden: and Other Tales. • Hans Christian Andersen

... much to do there to-night, save to eat supper," Jess said, yawning. "So much ozone is already making ...
— The Girls of Central High in Camp - The Old Professor's Secret • Gertrude W. Morrison

... an oily calmness floats out from the east, and the sea is still, as Jonah carries down the gale with him, leaving smooth water behind. He goes down in the whirling heart of such a masterless commotion that he scarce heeds the moment when he drops seething into the yawning jaws awaiting him; and the whale shoots-to all his ivory teeth, like so many white bolts, upon his prison. Then Jonah prayed unto the Lord out of the fish's belly. But observe his prayer, and learn a weighty lesson. For ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville

... in Madame de Sagan's apartments. The Countess lay on a couch, reading a French novel and yawning. ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard

... Drawbridge slams down, thundering (avec fracas). Glorious: and yet, alas, it is still but the outworks. The Eight grim Towers, with their Invalides' musketry, their paving stones and cannon-mouths, still soar aloft intact;—Ditch yawning impassable, stone-faced; the inner Drawbridge with its back towards us: the Bastille ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle

... 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, flying spray—icy, ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey

... see him. He sent them a little extra money, and he wrote as kindly as possible. He wanted to do the right thing; he was even anxious about it. He determined that he would do his very best to bridge over that yawning gulf. The gingerbread villa he absolutely could not face, so he met them at the Leicester ...
— The Double Life Of Mr. Alfred Burton • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... dray now drove up, and Hector, a delicate-looking youth, was the first to get out, stretching himself and yawning as ...
— The Young Berringtons - The Boy Explorers • W.H.G. Kingston

... said Constance, arching her eyebrows "we are to taste the sweets of domestic life you, as head of the family, will go to sleep in the dormeuse, and Florence and I shall take turns in yawning by ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell

... through the village of Priort, in debate about Vienna politics of a strange nature, Seckendorf said something, which illuminated his Majesty, dark for so many years, and showed him where he was. A ghastly horror of a country, yawning indisputable there; revealed to one as if by momentary lightning, in that manner! This is a speech which all the ambassadors report, and which was already mentioned by us,—in reference to that opprobrious Proposal about the Crown-Prince's ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. IX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... field-guns, motor-trucks, wheelbarrows, dog-carts, hay-ricks, baby-carriages, droves of people on foot, all flowing down to the Scheldt, the ferries, and the bridge. They poured into coal barges, filling the yawning black holes as Africans used to fill slave-ships, into launches and tugs, and along the roads leading down the ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl

... learning to draw," the Dormouse went on, yawning and rubbing its eyes, for it was getting very sleepy, "and they drew all manner of things—everything that begins ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.

... yawning out of the dining-room very soon after his sister and little Laura had left the apartment. "What an unsufferable bore that man is, and how he ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray

... such a snappish thread in you!" said Mr. Motley yawning—"only it sits better on George than it does on you. But I like it—it rather excites me to be snubbed. However, here comes Linden—so I hope they'll ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner

... stool, yawning): Ah, it's all very well for the Princess! Nothing to do but eat and sleep all day. I ...
— Christmas Entertainments • Alice Maude Kellogg

... revived; he whispered that the stranger carried a revolver. Whatever the king's faults might be—and God forbid that I should speak hardly of him whom fate used so hardly—he was no coward. He sprang from his bed; at the same moment the great boar-hound uncoiled himself and came from beneath, yawning and fawning. But in an instant the beast caught the scent of a stranger: his ears pricked and he gave a low growl, as he looked up in his master's face. Then Rupert of Hentzau, weary perhaps of waiting, perhaps only doubtful whether ...
— Rupert of Hentzau - From The Memoirs of Fritz Von Tarlenheim: The Sequel to - The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope

... visible about them is their copper-green hats. A sniper's rifle pecks somewhere in the landscape thereabout, but the two figures do not even turn a head. They are Bill and Jim from South Melbourne let loose upon the antediluvian landscape, strolling up it, yawning. And they gave me much the same shock as if some green and pink animal had suddenly issued from its unsuspected burrow in a field of primeval grey slime and begun crawling over its face to some haunt in the slime elsewhere. ...
— Letters from France • C. E. W. Bean

... stretched along No Man's Land, separating them from the wily Hun, for half the battalion front—a group which we will call Outpost. The name is wrong, but it will serve. To the near lips of each crater a sap ran out from the front line, so that merely the great yawning hole lay between the saphead and the corresponding abode of the Germans on the other lip. Each night these sapheads were held by a small group of men armed with Verey lights, bombs, bowie-knives, and other impedimenta of ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile

... Byzantine architecture; nor could we expect to see "lions" as historical as those which ornament the facade of Saint Mark's. However, as we glided up against the tide, in slow but steady progress, by willowy banks and osiered eyots, our boat yawning in and out and requiring a stiff weather helm to keep her course, we often caught glimpses of ivy-wreathed churches, charming villa residences and gothic summer-houses, peeping out from amidst the river-lining trees—with a verdant meadow here and there to break the ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson

... loveliest Hero shined And stole away th' enchanted gazer's mind, For like sea nymphs' enveigling Harmony, So was her beauty to the standers by. Nor that night-wandering, pale, and wat'ry star (When yawning dragons draw her thirling car From Latmus' mount up to the gloomy sky Where, crowned with blazing light and majesty, She proudly sits) more overrules the flood Than she the hearts of those that near her stood. Even as, ...
— Hero and Leander • Christopher Marlowe

... a premature elation when, on the twelfth step, a cleat strap gave. Luckily, he was able to take his lurch with a firm grip on the balustrade; but he felt depth yawning behind him. Dourly, he took thirty seconds to retrieve the cleat; stitching had been sawed through by a metal edge—just as he'd told the cocksure workman it would be. Oh, to have a world where imbecility wasn't entrenched! Well—he ...
— A Matter of Proportion • Anne Walker

... went so far as to plead guilty, when Grisel gave him the cue, of having a little heightened and overcoloured his story of the restless phantasmal old creature that haunted their queer wooden hauntable old house. And when they rose, laughing and yawning to take up their candles, it was, after all, after a rather animated discussion, with many a hair-raising ghost story brought in for proof between brother and sister, as to exactly how many times that snuff-coloured spectre had made his appearance; and, with less unanimity still, as to the precise ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare

... hold each individual soul Strung clear upon thy flaming rods of purpose? Or does thine inextinguishable will Stand on the steeps of night with lifted hand, Filling the yawning wells of monstrous space With mixing thought—drinking up single life As in a cup? and from the rending folds Of glimmering purpose, the gloom do all thy navied stars Slide through the gloom with mystic melody, Like wishes on a brow? Oh, is my soul, Hung like a dew-drop in thy grassy ways, Drawn ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald

... whom can I retrace the laughing part of life? It is odd how few of my friends have died a quiet death,—I mean, in their beds. But a quiet life is of more consequence. Yet one loves squabbling and jostling better than yawning. This 'last word' admonishes me ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron

... fading into the blackness of the desert night, he went, half a mile, perhaps. And then, halting the pony, he turned in the saddle and looked back, his head bent in a listening attitude. To his ears came the sharp bark of a coyote, very near. It was answered, faintly, from the vast, yawning distance, by another. Catherson stiffened, and lines of remorse ...
— The Range Boss • Charles Alden Seltzer

... of the family. Considering these facts, the state of the entrance and kitchen, through which, as is usual in France, visitors must pass to arrive at the salon, somewhat surprised us. The wide, yawning, black gulf, down which we had dived from the street, reminded us strongly of the entrance of the Arenes, at Poitiers, which gave passage to the beasts about to combat: it was a low, vaulted passage, encumbered with waggons and diligences and wheelbarrows, with no light but what it gained ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello

... 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 throne Views constellations brighter than her own. ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan

... entrails rend; From yawning rifts, with many a yell, Mixed with sulphureous flames, ascend The ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence

... the next morning. He went through the silent house before Sally had crept yawning from her room, and, throwing open the doors at each end of the hall, let a burst of sunshine and fresh wind into the darkness and stillness. Then he went out, and began to walk up and down the porch as a sort of outlet to his impatience. Over and over ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland

... lowers, for ever clouds remain. Impervious to the step of man it stands, Though borne by twenty feet, though arm'd with twenty hands; Smooth as the polish of the mirror rise The slippery sides, and shoot into the skies. Full in the centre of this rock display'd, A yawning cavern casts a dreadful shade: Nor the fleet arrow from the twanging bow, Sent with full force, could reach the depth below. Wide to the west the horrid gulf extends, And the dire passage down to hell descends. O fly ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope

... splits leaped over a smouldering hickory log, filling the cabin with the penetrating odour of burning, resinous pine. From the wall above the hearth a dozen roasting apples were suspended by hemp strings, and as the heat penetrated the russet coats the apples circled against the yawning chimney like small globes ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow

... loved work—it has always been my favorite form of recreation—and my spirit rose to the opportunities of it which smiled on us from every side. Obviously the first thing to do was to put doors and windows into the yawning holes father had left for them, and to lay a board flooring over the earth inside our cabin walls, and these duties we accomplished before we had occupied our new home a fortnight. There was a small saw-mill nine miles from our cabin, on the spot that is now Big Rapids, and there ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry

... aperture, dragging themselves along the ground until they reached a sort of subterranean hall, ornamented with arcades and high cupolas of crystal, supported by columns of shining marcasite; the hall itself opened out into large horizontal chambers, or else conducted to dark, deep yawning abysses toward the centre of the mountain. After having strayed from one grotto to another, the travellers arrived near a fountain of crystal water. There they stopped, till, seeing their torches wane low, they thought of retracing their steps. But, after walking for some minutes in the ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli

... turning her face 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 ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book I - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various

... join his friend at the viewing-disk of the rulden. Mado had found an opening in the heavy cloud layer, and before them was an unobstructed view of a rugged countryside where huge boulders had been scattered by the mighty hand of creation and where the sun shone weakly on the rim of a yawning crater in which sulphurous vapors curled. They saw this strange land as from an altitude of a few hundred feet, though the Nomad was still more than a ...
— Creatures of Vibration • Harl Vincent

... setting ourselves to the pump, we had in an hour or two a clear ship. The Betsey is clinker-built below. The elastic oak planks had yielded inwards to the pressure of the rock, tearing out the fastenings, and admitted the tide at wide yawning seams; but no sooner was the pressure removed, than out they sprung again into their places, like bows when the strings are slackened; and when the carpenter came to overhaul, he found he had little else to do than to remove ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller

... from under the stove, languidly stretching himself, and yawning until all the red cavern of his mouth and throat was revealed. At the moment he had an uncanny resemblance to Elder Joseph Blewett of White Sands—Roaring Joe, the irreverent boys called him—when he grew excited and shouted. ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... which in terror others fain would steal Now is the time, through deeds, to show that mortals The calm sublimity of gods can feel; To shudder not at yonder dark abyss, Where phantasy creates her own self-torturing brood, Right onward to the yawning gulf to press, Around whose narrow jaws rolleth hell's fiery flood; With glad resolve to take the fatal leap, Though danger threaten thee, ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

... hut. The door opened for an inch, and there was a long debate in Spanish, and finally the door was closed again, and a light appeared through the windows. A few minutes later a man and woman came out of the hut, shivering and yawning, and made a fire in the sun-baked oven at the side of the house. Hope and Clay remained seated in the carriage, and watched the flames springing up from the oily fagots, and the boys moving about with flaring torches of pine, ...
— Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis

... thrashing sound in the thicket, and the Phoenix appeared, looking very rumpled and yawning ...
— David and the Phoenix • Edward Ormondroyd

... of confinement, have begun their careers just in this way, showing disrespect for their elders and for the church. Beware, young people, who think you are smart and laugh and titter in the sanctuary; there is a prison waiting for you, there is a hell yawning for you. Behold, there is death ...
— The Uncalled - A Novel • Paul Laurence Dunbar

... having gone thither, has ever 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 ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider

... figure?" persisted Miles. Again a wordless message flashed across the tackle-room. This time the Kid, yawning, stretched one hand ...
— Old Man Curry - Race Track Stories • Charles E. (Charles Emmett) Van Loan

... bounds, and getting over the ground in a manner most surprising, Mark soon found himself on the edge of the great, yawning crater, into which his chum Jack had started to slide. I say started, for, fortunately, the lad had been saved from death but by a ...
— Lost on the Moon - or In Quest Of The Field of Diamonds • Roy Rockwood

... his teeth in his under lip and looked straight and hard at Neergard, but Neergard thrust both hands in his pockets, turned squarely on his heel, and sauntered out of the room, yawning as he went. ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers

... other, calmly staring past him; "so she told me last night." The bore and his blissful smile passed on to the next group. There, two or three women were chatting with as many men, yawning and puffing at their cigarettes, bored by the risque stories the men were telling, but smiling as though they had not already heard them from other men. Occasional remarks, dropped softly into the ears of the women, may have brought faint blushes ...
— The Flyers • George Barr McCutcheon

... who are still of college age. This is particularly true of the use of concrete language. It is a matter of common knowledge that men do not rouse themselves over abstract principles; they will grant their assent, often without really knowing what is implied by the general principle, and go away yawning. On the other hand, the man who talks about the real and actual things which you know is likely to keep your attention. This goes back to the truth that our emotions and feelings are primarily the reaction to the concrete ...
— The Making of Arguments • J. H. Gardiner

... tightly, and lashed his horse. With one spring he cleared the stone wall of the field, and then dashed furiously over the stony ground. It was a fearful sight. Emily saw it as she clung closely to her horse, and the yawning gulf and the fearful deed of Melville took away all thought of herself. She ...
— The Duke's Prize - A Story of Art and Heart in Florence • Maturin Murray

... this lovely earth, presented her most unrivalled beauties in resplendent and sudden exhibition. Below, far, far below, even as it were in the yawning abyss of the ponderous globe, lay the placid and azure expanse of lake Leman; vine-covered hills hedged it in, and behind dark mountains in cone-like shape, or irregular cyclopean wall, served for further defence. But beyond, and high above all, as ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley

... a wet day!" says Luttrell, moodily, for the twentieth time, staring blankly out of the deserted school-room window, where he and Molly have been yawning, moping for the ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton

... mind of what, at least, he suspected; for he well knew that hunters did not find their way into this unsurveyed wilderness! Then, too, there was something in the stillness of the night that seemed to portend great things. The leaves transmitted their restlessness to my yawning nerves, as iron dust ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris

... a measured tune, following with a minuet-step up and down the floor. A fantastic spectacle! for as he passed and repassed the lamp, an elastic shadow crept noiselessly behind him, dodged beneath his feet, and anon outstretched itself like a sudden pit yawning before him. "This night repays the dreary years that lie behind. How have I outlasted them! What had I fallen on the very threshold of requital?—all I had hoped ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne

... the big swamp, where the yawning, haunted gully plunges down to its gloomy depths, Graeme reminded me of that night when our horse saw something in that same gully, and refused to go past; and I felt again, though it was broad daylight, something ...
— Black Rock • Ralph Connor

... 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 ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson

... of night was still in the kitchen; in the corner where the stove stood it was so dark that Ollie had to grope her way, yawning heavily, feeling that she would willingly trade the last year of her life for one more hour of sleep that moist ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden

... fell to the ground, and he stooped to pick it up; she had vanished. He threw it over his arm, and approaching the window squarely he saw a monstrous form of a fat man in an armchair, an unshaded lamp, the yawning of an enormous mouth in a big flat face encircled by a ragged halo of hair—Miss Bessie's head and bust. The shouting stopped; the blind ran down. He lost himself in thinking how awkward it was. Father ...
— To-morrow • Joseph Conrad

... 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 ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford

... amazed, Belinda. Don't look so new, child. This funeral of my lord's intellects is to me a nightly ceremony; or," said her ladyship, looking at her watch and yawning, "I believe I should say a daily ceremony—six ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton

... when they halted at the beginning of a desperate and dangerous climb amid mighty bowlders, with yawning ...
— Frank Merriwell's Bravery • Burt L. Standish

... re-animating his dispirited followers, defying danger and death whilst he waved the national flag, and drove the enemy from their entrenchments, and blasted their glory. Others pointed him out whilst crossing the perpetual snows and yawning chasms of Mount St. Bernard, and then victorious on the plains of Marengo, where he won that battle which insured the peace and glory ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon

... Desire Cushman, a tall, slender woman, in a flounced calico dress, was walking up and down the room; a class of boys and girls stood in a zigzag line before her, swaying to and fro, and drawling the multiplication table. She was yawning as I entered, which exercise forbade her speaking, and I took my seat without a reprimand. The flies were just coming; I watched their sticky legs as they feebly crawled over my old unpainted notched desk, and crumbled my gingerbread for them; but they seemed to have no appetite. ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard

... their carved supports and grey roofs (the latter looking like pendent, embroidered tablecloths), resembled, rather, bundles of old faggots. Likewise the customary peasants, dressed in sheepskin jackets, could be seen yawning on benches before their huts, while their womenfolk, fat of feature and swathed of bosom, gazed out of upper windows, and the windows below displayed, here a peering calf, and there the unsightly jaws of a pig. In short, the view was one of the familiar type. ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol

... remains, and death is naught But life's last goal, so swiftly sought: Let those who cling to life abate Their fond desires, and yield to fate; Soon shall grim time and yawning night In their vast depths engulf us quite; Impartial death demands the whole— The body slays nor spares the soul. Dark Taenara and Pluto fell, And Cerberus, grim guard of hell— All these but empty rumours seem, ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler

... there," said the boy, yawning fearfully, "he put himself there. He's a tiger, he is, and he blows me up reg'lar 'cause you ...
— Five Little Peppers Grown Up • Margaret Sidney

... himselfe aboue water without hiding: Notwithstanding, we presented our selues in open view and gesture to amase him, as all creatures will be commonly at a sudden gaze and sight of men. Thus he passed along turning his head to and fro, yawning and gaping wide, with ougly demonstration of long teeth, and glaring eies, and to bidde vs a farewell (comming right against the Hinde) he sent forth a horrible voyce, roaring or bellowing as doeth a lion, which ...
— Tales of the Enchanted Islands of the Atlantic • Thomas Wentworth Higginson

... costume, with yellow kid gloves, and white cravats showing under their overcoats, evidently men belonging to the wedding-party, were chatting merrily while they were waiting for the end of the ceremony. If they were amused, they hardly showed it; for some made an effort to hide their yawning, while others kept up a broken conversation, when a small coupe drove up, and ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau

... our house," he said sleepily. And then he roused to the exigency of the occasion. "All right, Aunt Ray," he said, still yawning. "If you'll let me get ...
— The Circular Staircase • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... up the winding path, opened the door and led her into the library where his father sat yawning. Lydia slipped round the back way to the kitchen and took ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown

... Miss Connie Brown, aged sixteen, who was yawning over a novel on the chaise-lounge of her bedroom, was electrified into action by the announcement that two gentlemen callers were waiting for her in the parlor. Miss Connie was in excellent health, weighing one hundred and sixty ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson

... of the Quenu-Gradelles. Through the clear glass windows you could see the interior, which was decorated with festoons of foliage, vine branches, and grapes, painted on a soft green ground. The floor was tiled with large black and white squares. At the far end was the yawning cellar entrance, above which rose a spiral staircase hung with red drapery, and leading to the billiard-room on the first floor. The counter or "bar" on the right looked especially rich, and glittered like polished silver. Its zinc-work, hanging with a broad ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola

... nothing was thought of but the exploits of certain marksmen, the number of pieces bagged, and the joyous outdoor breakfasts which preceded each occasion. One evening, as Julien, more moody than usual, stood yawning wearily and leaning on the corner of the stove, Claudet noticed him, and was touched with pity for this young fellow, who had so little idea how to employ his time, his youth, or his money. He felt impelled, as a conscientious ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet

... stood gazing across that yawning gulf, the conviction entered their minds that it was possible ...
— The Plant Hunters - Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains • Mayne Reid

... imitations of windows painted on to the walls of houses to support a grotesque idea of harmony, without incurring the expense of an actual aperture for light and air. Pitt raised the loans necessary to meet the yawning deficit and to minimize the floating debt, and he astonished his world by introducing the amazing elements of absolute honesty and admirable publicity into the transaction. The principle of patronage that had made previous loans a scandalous source of corruption ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy

... consequences ensue; and, unless grace prevent, the transgressor must inevitably perish. Avoid then, studiously avoid, whatever leads to the way of death. Escape for thy life, O sinner, from the brink of transgression, if thou hast unhappily ventured so far; and tremble at the yawning gulf below. If thou hast fallen, while thou hast not yet passed the boundaries of life, thou art not irrecoverably lost; but, O let a sense of thy danger induce thee to lift up thine eyes to ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox

... as the evening wore along. Several times they caught Lub in the act of yawning, and he was of course immediately poked in the ribs as they besought him to please not swallow the cabin ...
— Phil Bradley's Mountain Boys - The Birch Bark Lodge • Silas K. Boone

... had proceeded to insert iron eye-bolts into holes which they drilled into the rock every few feet apart. But when they found themselves three hundred feet above the Saddle, clinging like flies to the precarious wall with on either hand a yawning abyss, their nerves failed them and they abandoned the enterprise. So it remained for an indomitable Scotchman, one George Anderson, finally to achieve the feat. Beginning where they had left off, drilling and ...
— Dutch Courage and Other Stories • Jack London

... in the great rainy and shot-hammered space that has no other boundary than the distant and tremendous cannonade. Bertrand has finished his distribution and returns. Several soldiers have sat down, and some of them are yawning. ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse

... Zeal and Judgment singled forth 690 To try the sprite on Reason's plan, Whether it was of God or man. Dark was the night; it was that hour When Terror reigns in fullest power, When, as the learn'd of old have said, The yawning Grave gives up her dead; When Murder, Rapine by her side, Stalks o'er the earth with giant stride; Our Quixotes (for that knight of old Was not in truth by half so bold, 700 Though Reason at the same time cries, 'Our ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill

... and returned to the trunk. He gazed down at the yawning interior for a few seconds, then put first one foot, then the other over the side. He sat down and stared at a peeling blue-paper liner. He rolled over and curled up. The bottom of the trunk was a good fit. He reached up and found a rope ...
— My Shipmate—Columbus • Stephen Wilder

... he answered, yawning. "Alas! I already feel it closing in upon me. My life is spent in one long effort to escape from the common-places of existence. These little problems help me ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various

... the old Frenchman made his habitual promenade in the city. But the light from the newly-opened hatch allowed her to see more of the mysterious recesses of the forward bulkhead than she had known before, and she was startled by observing another yawning hatch-way at her feet from which the closely-fitting door had been lifted, and which the new lodger had evidently forgotten to close again. The young girl stooped down and peered cautiously into the black abyss. Nothing was ...
— By Shore and Sedge • Bret Harte

... blankets spread smoothly and a wooden bench in one corner, 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 ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... difference between one of our temples and shrines and an English church," Yanagi proceeded, "but I cannot believe in the gap which some people seem to see yawning between East and West. It is deplorable that the world should think that there is such a complete difference between East and West. It is usually said that self-denial, asceticism, sacrifice, negation are opposed to self-affirmation, ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott

... to a stop a hundred feet or so from the ruined bridge and its passengers, going forward cautiously, looked down shudderingly into the yawning chasm. For a few seconds the very thought of what might have happened filled them ...
— Tom Slade's Double Dare • Percy Keese Fitzhugh

... 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 stone ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr

... 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 ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely

... 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 last night, ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris

... depths. There stood Smashana-Kali,[FN192] the goddess, in her most horrid form. She was a naked and very black woman, with half-severed head, partly cut and partly painted, resting on her shoulder; and her tongue lolled out from her wide yawning mouth[FN193]; her eyes were red like those of a drunkard; and her eyebrows were of the same colour: her thick coarse hair hung like a mantle to her heels. She was robed in an elephant's hide, dried and withered, confined at the ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton

... the will of Miramon Lluagor that I forthwith demolish you both," says this serpent, yawning with a mouth like ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell

... proud, dashing Juno Cameron, who once spent a few weeks in town, Wilford knew they were talking about him, but he did not care, and assuming as easy an attitude as possible, he leaned hack in his chair, yawning indolently, and wishing the time away, until the class in algebra was called and Katy Lennox came tripping on to the stage, a pale blue ribbon in her golden hair and her simple dress of white relieved by no ornament except the cluster of wild flowers fastened in her belt ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes

... was on my travels, extricated me from certain dangers that, according to the doctrine of chances, would have been fatal to me; which, to cite one special instance, brought Dr. Suquet over from America to rescue me from the jaws of death which were yawning to swallow me up. The only conclusion I would fain draw from all this is that the unconscious effort towards what is good and true in the universe has its throw of the dice through the intermediary of each one of us. There is no combination but what comes up, quaternions ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan

... one ugly thing in the whole palace, which was a little, drowsy, gray dwarf, left there by the fairy Prosperity. He kept yawning all day, and very often set the Prince yawning, too, only to look at him. This dwarf they called Satiety, and he followed the Prince ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various

... of men with speed, And saddled strait his coal-black steed: Down the yawning steep he rode, That leads ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various

... Below him the tree tops and the river passed rapidly to the rear and only a slender grass rope and the muscles of a frail girl stood between him and the death yawning ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... to the 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 ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds

... of me the ground fell down steeply, and the torn sides of the crater formed a funnel-shaped cavity, a dark, yawning depth. There were jagged rocks, fantastic, wild ridges, crevices, fearful depths, from which issued steam and smoke. Poisonous vapour poured out of the rocks in white and brownish clouds that waved to and fro, slowly rising, until ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser

... ghastly romancing about Scottish scenery and manners, the Highland dress, and everything national or local that I could lay my hands upon. Now that I have got my German Burns, I lean a good deal upon him for opening a conversation, and read a few translations to every yawning audience that I can gather. I am grown most insufferably national, you see. I fancy it is a punishment for my want of it at ordinary times. Now, what do you think, there was a waiter in this very hotel, but, alas! he is now gone, who sang (from morning to night, as my informant said with a shrug ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson

... were uncovered and he saw them with their huge shells yawning and the meat within looking white and tempting, he declared he was ...
— Frank Merriwell's Cruise • Burt L. Standish

... who is a real connoisseur in the art, can sometimes by a single glance as he passes through the Forum, and without stopping to listen attentively to what is said, form a tolerable judgment of the ability of the Speaker. When he observes any of the Bench either yawning, or speaking to the person who is next to him, or looking carelessly about him, or sending to enquire the time of day, or teazing the Quaestor to dismiss the court; he concludes very naturally that the cause ...
— Cicero's Brutus or History of Famous Orators; also His Orator, or Accomplished Speaker. • Marcus Tullius Cicero

... began asking details as to the conditions of the wheat growers of the San Joaquin. Lyman still maintained an attitude of polite aloofness, yawning occasionally behind three fingers, and Presley was left to the company of ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris

... type of face, and she has the clear olive complexion of the Italian. Well, you will see them for yourself on Sunday, for they are regular church-goers, though Mr. Jacobi's behaviour during service is not always edifying. They have seats near us, and it irritates me dreadfully to see him lounging and yawning while other ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... padded foot came up and then went down with a soft thud. Then came another soft thud and another and another. Suddenly the monstrous trunk waved, curled, lifted, stretched and stretched, until its soft pink end was thrust through the high iron fence and the little boy could look up into the fleshy yawning red mouth. The little boy drew back from the high iron fence. The end of the trunk wiggled and wriggled around feeling its way up and down a rod of the fence; the great body swayed from one heavy foot to the other; ...
— Here and Now Story Book - Two- to seven-year-olds • Lucy Sprague Mitchell

... the shrill north strikes full on the sail and raises the waves up to heaven. The oars are snapped; the prow swings away and gives her side to the waves; down in a heap comes a broken mountain of water. These hang on the wave's ridge; to these the yawning billow shows ground amid the surge, where the sea churns with sand. Three ships the south wind catches and hurls on hidden rocks, rocks amid the waves which Italians call the Altars, a vast reef banking the sea. Three the east forces from the deep into ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil

... since we left Boulogne yesterday, and is coming to Paris to pursue the study of medicine, swears that he rejoices to leave the cursed Diligence, is sick of the infernal journey, and d—d glad that the d—d voyage is so nearly over. "Enfin!" says your neighbor, yawning, and inserting an elbow into the mouth of his right and left hand ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray

... been playing this livelong day; It does make a fellow so tired to play! Oh, my, I'm a-yawning right here before ma, I'm the sleepiest fellow that ever you saw. I think ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar

... natural, they were well satisfied; and I being such a big man and heavy to shift, they give up the notion of slinging me into the Irrawaddy and went off still quarrelling. I stayed on without a move out of me for a full hour; then I got up yawning my head off, and walked away with the ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker

... months, perhaps years, scarce one untoward incident comes to break the slow routine of existence. The doings of one day repeat those of the day before, anticipate those of the morrow. What shall the chronicler do? Send his reader yawning to bed over the unfinishable tale? Or pass over, in a word, some period in which his subject is growing and changing, day by day, for better or for worse, till he emerges from that long, monotonous stretch, a creature startlingly different ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter

... on my trowsers," shouted a voice from the window, and the door was soon opened by the yawning landlord. ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 4. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner

... but tumultuous. He had a feeling that an earthquake had opened the ground at his feet. With all his might he sought to save himself from the yawning chasm. But the sudden jolt of his great weight was more than his muscles could withstand. His hands relaxed their grip upon the foliage and he fell with a ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum

... cart, and walked with rapid, resolute steps to the spot which was indicated to him, and behind which an open grave was yawning. ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach

... women wore only a narrow strip of cloth. He had again a lesson in native manners. Paying ceremonial visits to the chiefs, they sat and looked at the ground, and yawned repeatedly, and after a time left. To him the yawning seemed rude, but "Ma" said it was the correct thing, and when the chiefs returned the calls he knew that, ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone

... view of the M.C.C. match on the Wednesday, however, he had now added to this an extra dose to be taken before breakfast. Stone and Robinson had left their comfortable beds that day at six o'clock, yawning and heavy-eyed, and had caught catches and fielded drives which, in the cool morning air, had stung like adders and bitten like serpents. Until the sun has really got to work, it is no joke taking a high catch. Stone's dislike of the experiment ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse

... ordered the destruction of the fort which he had so gallantly defended. When the last man had retired, with his own hand he fired the train which caused the explosion of the powder magazine. When the victorious army marched in, they found only the breached and blackened walls, the yawning gates, and dismantled ramparts of the fort. From the shattered flagstaff, where it still waved defiantly, though rent and seared by shot and shell, the brave red-cross flag was hauled down and replaced by the ...
— Neville Trueman the Pioneer Preacher • William Henry Withrow

... of the passage, the fellah who carried the torch threw himself back abruptly, for the path was suddenly interrupted by the mouth of a square well yawning black at ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier

... either end rose towers of red brick, loopholed for musketry and pierced for big guns, and the ramp of the road was being pushed forward to their haunches. The raw earth-ends were crawling and alive with hundreds upon hundreds of tiny asses climbing out of the yawning borrow-pit below with sackfuls of stuff; and the hot afternoon air was filled with the noise of hooves, the rattle of the drivers' sticks, and the swish and roll-down of the dirt. The river was very low, and on the dazzling white sand between the ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling

... my trusty servant: I have been made glad with thy letter.' The rest of the lords of the pit gave him also their salutations. Then Profane, after obeisance made to them all, said, 'Let Mansoul be given to my lord Diabolus, and let him be her king for ever.' And with that, the hollow belly and yawning gorge of hell gave so loud and hideous a groan, (for that is the music of that place,) that it made the mountains about it totter, as if they would fall ...
— The Holy War • John Bunyan

... in any cause, and the well of solicitors before mentioned? There is the registrar below the judge, in wig and gown; and there are two or three maces, or petty- bags, or privy purses, or whatever they may be, in legal court suits. These are all yawning, for no crumb of amusement ever falls from Jarndyce and Jarndyce (the cause in hand), which was squeezed dry years upon years ago. The short-hand writers, the reporters of the court, and the reporters ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens

... cheers his wife on the doubtful intelligence of Banquo's taking-off with the encouragement—"Then be thou jocund: ere the bat has flown his cloistered flight; ere to black Hecate's summons the shard-born beetle has rung night's yawning peal, there shall be done—a deed of dreadful note." In Lady Macbeth's speech "Had he not resembled my father as he slept, I had done 't," there is murder and filial piety together; and in urging him to fulfil his vengeance against the defenceless king, her thoughts spare the blood neither ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin

... the riverside that the place is well suited to our mood to go a-dreaming of the centuries which have been so long dead that our imaginations are not cumbered with any of the dull times that may have often set the canons of St. Agatha's yawning. The walk along the steep shady bank above the river is beautiful all the way, and the surroundings of the broken walls and traceried windows are singularly rich. There is nothing, however, at Easby that makes a striking picture, although there are many architectural fragments that ...
— Yorkshire Painted And Described • Gordon Home

... just then; and snatching away the axe, he began to apply it with tremendous effect, the chips flying over the precipice, and a great yawning opening appearing in the upper part of ...
— The Silver Canyon - A Tale of the Western Plains • George Manville Fenn

... market is yawning for it, Middlebrook, and not far away," he answered. "If this craft drops in at Aberdeen, or at Thurso, or at Moville, and the Customs folks or any other such-like hawks and kites come aboard, they'll find nothing but three innocent gentlemen and their servants a-yachting ...
— Ravensdene Court • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher

... stopped at a station. Two men had got into the car, and had taken seats in the one vacant section, yawning occasionally and conversing in a languid, perfunctory sort of way. They sat opposite each other, occasionally looking out of the window, but always giving the strong impression that they were tired of each other's ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte

... 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

... heard," said the man with the large chin, yawning again. "Left it to his company, perhaps. He hasn't left it to me. That's ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various

... not come amiss," he answered, yawning; "though it seems almost a pity to go to bed on such ...
— The Motor Pirate • George Sidney Paternoster

... at Ben as he walked away, unable to comprehend how anyone should step into a yawning chasm after being warned ...
— The Telegraph Messenger Boy - The Straight Road to Success • Edward S. Ellis

... travelling through veins and nourishing the heart of the town? No mention shall be made of sewers, nor of the hidden nerves which serve to communicate sensations from one part of the town's body to another; nor of the yawning jaws of the railway stations, whereby the circulation is carried directly into the heart,—which receive the venous lines, and disgorge the arterial, with an eternal pulse of people. And the sleep of the town, how life-like! with its change in ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler

... I sat formed a side of one of those yawning gulfs common in Spanish America, and known by the name barrancas. It seemed as if a mountain had been scooped out and carried away. Not two hundred yards horizontally distant was the twin jaw of the ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid

... Platypus, yawning again, without so much as putting its web foot in front of its bill, which Dot thought very rude, or else very ancient manners. "Little Human," it said, "tell me what kind of bush creatures ...
— Dot and the Kangaroo • Ethel C. Pedley

... Sherton-Abbas was an old stone-fronted inn with a yawning arch, under which vehicles were driven by stooping coachmen to back premises of wonderful commodiousness. The windows to the street were mullioned into narrow lights, and only commanded a view of the opposite houses; hence, perhaps, it arose ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy

... hot—my brain was dizzy, and the room swam round me. I thought of the name which I had been striving for years to build up—the honourable name which I had gained—the height from which I was about to fall—the yawning gulf below—a thousand painful thoughts rushed in one instant to my mind, and overcame me. I should have fallen to the earth, had not my heart found in my eyes a passage for its grief, and rendered me weaker than a child before a ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various

... shambled off to find consolation among the white-capped nurses, and the student, looking at his watch, stood up yawning. Then catching sight of Hastings, he smiled and bowed. Hastings walked over to the ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers

... window-pane. The unfortunate box of novels was open by her side, and the books were lying, for the most part, strewed about on the ground at her feet. One volume lay open, back upward, on her lap, and her hands were crossed over it listlessly. To my great dismay, she was yawning—palpably and widely yawning—when I ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins

... 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 ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. I. • Thomas De Quincey

... sometimes great chasms were at one side, stretching further and further, and crowding the narrow path—the herder's trail—against the sheer ascent, till it seemed that the treacherous mountains were yawning to engulf them. The air was growing colder, but was exquisitely clear and exhilarating; the great dewy ferns flung silvery fronds athwart the way; vines in stupendous lengths swung from the tops of gigantic trees to the roots. Hark! among them birds chirp; a matutinal ...
— The Riddle Of The Rocks - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)

... prepared myself with a pair of green spectacles, and called one fine morning, quite by accident, at the Ministerial hotel. I found D—— at home, yawning, lounging, and dawdling, as usual, and pretending to be in the last extremity of ennui. He is, perhaps, the most really energetic human being now alive—but that is only when ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various

... sympathy or admiration; or he took a short stroll with her; or bestowed his company upon her in some other dutiful fashion. But these filial attentions over, if he yawned with relief—why, he never did so in her presence, and would have been unable to understand that Lady Mary saw him yawning, in her mind's eye, as plainly as though he had indulged this bad habit under her very nose. He bestowed a portion of his time on his aunts in much the same spirit, taking less trouble to be affectionate, because they were less exacting, as he would ...
— Peter's Mother • Mrs. Henry De La Pasture

... chapter of the first Essay of Montaigne will show with what great reverence he treated ceremonial customs and hollow formulas; for instance, the sign of the cross, of which he 'continually made use, even if he be but yawning' (sic). It is not a mere coincidence, but a well-calculated trait in the character of Hamlet, that in his speech he goes through a scale of exclamations and asseverations such as Shakspere employs in no other of his poetical creations. Hamlet incessantly ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis

... divided our national councils. It has engendered deadly strife between brethren. It has wasted the treasure of the Commonwealth, and the lives of thousands of brave men, and driven troops of helpless women and children into yawning tombs. It has caused the bloodiest civil war recorded in the book of time. It has shorn this nation of its locks of strength that was rising as a young lion in the Western world. It has offered us as ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various

... partner. The first impression was one of disappointment. It looked so like a public dinner of middle-class people. There was no local character in costume or customs. Men and women sat politely bored, expectant, trifling with their napkins, yawning, muttering nothings about the weather or their neighbours. The frozen commonplaceness of the scene was made for me still more oppressive by Signora dell' Acqua. She was evidently satirical, and could not be ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds



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



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