the.com/yawn
the involuntary jaw-cracking confession that your brain wants to be anywhere but here
means to open the mouth wide and inhale deeply in an involuntary reflex, usually triggered by tiredness, boredom, or simply seeing someone else do it
from From Old English ginian / gānian, 'to gape, open wide,' rooted in a Germanic family that also gave us 'gap' and 'gape' — and tracing back to a Proto-Indo-European base meaning 'to yawn or gape' (ghei-), the same ancient root that surfaces in Latin hiare, 'to gape,' and Greek chaos, the primordial 'yawning void.' So when you yawn, you're briefly reenacting the opening of the universe.
- contagious reflex
- Seeing or reading about yawns can trigger one
- brain coolant
- Likely cools an overheating brain, not lung oxygen
- womb practice
- Fetuses yawn months before they're born
- empathy link
- Catching yawns correlates with social closeness
- cross-species
- Dogs catch yawns from their humans