In the mid sixteenth century, the period extending from when a woman took to her bed to give birth to when she was strong enough to get back on her feet was called her groaning, a blunt reference to her labour pains. During this time, the food provided for the woman’s attendants and visitors was laid out on the groaning board and the special status of each dish was emphasized by prefacing its name with the word groaning; thus, visitors ate groaning cake, groaning bread, groaning cheese, and groaning pie; they were also served groaning beer or groaning wine that the husband had made especially for the occasion. In some areas of England, groaning continues to be used to form such compounds to this day. In origin, the word groan derives from an Indo-European source that meant to gape, a source that also gave rise to the word grin: grinning and groaning express very different emotions, but both are characterized by an open, gaping mouth.