Page "Yawn" Paragraph 36

Several superstitions have developed regarding the act of yawning and the harm that the act can do to the individual who is yawning.

These superstitions may not only have arisen to prevent people from committing the faux pas of yawning loudly in another's presence ( one of Mason Cooley's aphorisms is " A yawn is more disconcerting than a contradiction.

"), and in 1663 Francis Hawkins advised " In yawning howl not, and thou shouldst abstain as much as thou can to yawn, especially when thou speakest ", but may also have arisen from concerns over public health.

Polydore Vergil ( c. 1470 – 1555 ), in his De Rerum Inventoribus, writes that it was customary to make the Sign of the Cross over one's mouth, since " alike deadly plague was sometime in yawning, wherefore men used to fence themselves with the sign of the cross ... which custom we retain at this day.