Culture
Some cultures lend yawning spiritual significance. The Ancient Greeks and classic Maya believed that yawning was a sign that a person's soul was trying to escape from his or her body. Covering the mouth when yawning might then prevent the soul from escaping.
Exorcists believe that yawning can indicate that a demon or possessive spirit is leaving its human host during the course of an exorcism.
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."
Yawning is often perceived as rude due to the implication of boredom, and a loud yawn may even lead to penalties for contempt of court.
George Washington said "If You Cough, Sneeze, Sigh, or Yawn, do it not Loud but Privately; and Speak not in your Yawning, but put Your handkerchief or Hand before your face and turn aside."
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Famous quotes containing the word culture:
“We belong to an age whose culture is in danger of perishing through the means to culture.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“Anthropologists have found that around the world whatever is considered “men’s work” is almost universally given higher status than “women’s work.” If in one culture it is men who build houses and women who make baskets, then that culture will see house-building as more important. In another culture, perhaps right next door, the reverse may be true, and basket- weaving will have higher social status than house-building.”
—Mary Stewart Van Leeuwen. Excerpted from, Gender Grace: Love, Work, and Parenting in a Changing World (1990)
“No race has the last word on culture and on civilization. You do not know what the black man is capable of; you do not know what he is thinking and therefore you do not know what the oppressed and suppressed Negro, by virtue of his condition and circumstance, may give to the world as a surprise.”
—Marcus Garvey (1887–1940)