Yawnrelay

Yawnrelay (n.) is the chain reaction that begins when one person in a room gives in to a yawn and ends several minutes later with everyone else having done exactly the same. The first yawn is innocent. It happens at the far end of a table during a long explanation of a budget. By the time it has passed the second and third chairs, it has picked up speed. The person presenting the budget yawns last, mid-sentence, and then apologises to the room.

A yawnrelay does not need a table. It can run the length of a train carriage, jump across a waiting room or travel down a queue at the post office like a slow wave at a stadium. It prefers warm rooms and dull afternoons, but it is not fussy. It has been observed at weddings, in libraries and once, memorably, during a very exciting football match, when a man in the stands yawned for no clear reason and eleven people near him followed.

The most frustrating thing about a yawnrelay is that resisting it makes it worse. People who notice a yawn coming towards them clamp their jaws, look at the ceiling and try to think about something bracing, like tax. The yawn waits patiently. It then escapes through the nose, which fools nobody and looks, from across the room, like a person trying not to sneeze while being told a secret.

It can also travel through other routes. Seeing a yawn is enough, and so is hearing one from the next room. Some people catch a yawn simply from reading about yawns, and if you have yawned at any point in the last few paragraphs, you have taken part in a yawnrelay of your own. Please do not feel bad about it. Most readers do.

The relay is not limited to people. Dogs have been known to join in, and so, according to those who have tried it at the zoo, can a very sleepy chimpanzee. Cats, on the other hand, yawn only when they have personally decided to, and appear to regard the whole business as beneath them.

The real thing behind the word is called contagious yawning, and it is surprisingly common. Studies suggest that somewhere around half of adults will yawn after watching someone else do it, and just thinking or reading about yawning can be enough to set it off. It has also been seen in chimpanzees, and dogs have been reported to catch yawns from humans, which has made scientists wonder whether it is linked to social bonding.

Why it happens is still being worked out. One long-standing idea is that it is connected to empathy, since people often seem more likely to catch yawns from those they know well, but studies have not always agreed on that. Age appears to matter, with younger people generally more likely to join in than older ones. What researchers do agree on is that a yawn is not simply a sign of boredom. It is also, in some small way, a sign that you were paying attention to somebody else.