yawn

英文词源

yawn

yawn: [OE] Yawn goes back ultimately to the Indo-European base *ghei-, *ghi-, which also produced Greek kháskein ‘gape’ (a close relative of English chasm [17]) and Latin hiāre ‘gape, yawn’ (source of English hiatus [16]). The base passed into prehistoric Germanic as *gai-, *gi-, whose surviving descendants are German gähnen, Dutch geeuwen, and English yawn. English gap and gape probably come from an extension of the same Indo-European base.
=> chasm, gap, gape, hiatus

yawn (v.)

c. 1300, yenen, yonen, from Old English ginian, gionian "open the mouth wide, yawn, gape," from Proto-Germanic *gin- (cognates: Old Norse gina "to yawn," Dutch geeuwen, Old High German ginen, German gähnen "to yawn"), from PIE *ghai- "to yawn, gape" (cognates: Old Church Slavonic zijajo "to gape," Lithuanian žioju, Czech zivati "to yawn," Greek khainein, Latin hiare "to yawn, gape," Sanskrit vijihite "to gape, be ajar"). Modern spelling is from 16c. Related: Yawned; yawning.

yawn (n.)

"act of yawning," 1690s, from yawn (v.). Meaning "boring thing" is attested from 1889.