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harken. In DICTIOUS you will not only get to know all the dictionary meanings for the word
harken, but we will also tell you about its etymology, its characteristics and you will know how to say
harken in singular and plural. Everything you need to know about the word
harken you have here. The definition of the word
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English
Etymology
See hearken
Pronunciation
Verb
harken (third-person singular simple present harkens, present participle harkening, simple past and past participle harkened)
- (transitive, intransitive, chiefly US) Alternative spelling of hearken: to hear, to listen, to have regard.
1697, Virgil, “The Fourth Book of the Georgics”, in John Dryden, transl., The Works of Virgil: Containing His Pastorals, Georgics, and Æneis. , London: Jacob Tonson, , →OCLC, page 143, lines 690–693:Ev'n from the depths of Hell the Damn'd advance, / Th' Infernal Manſions nodding ſeem to dance; / The gaping three-mouth'd Dog forgets to ſnarl, / The Furies harken, and their Snakes uncurl.
1843 January, Edgar A[llan] Poe, “The Tell-Tale Heart”, in J[ames] Russell Lowell, R[obert] Carter, editors, The Pioneer. A Literary and Critical Magazine, volume I, number I, Boston, Mass.: Leland and Whiting, , →OCLC, page 29, column 1:How, then, am I mad? Harken! and observe how healthily—how calmly I can tell you the whole story.
1942, William Faulkner, “The Bear”, in Go Down, Moses, New York, N.Y.: Random House, →OCLC, section 5, page 326:[T]he mother who had shaped him if any had toward the man he almost was, [...] whom he had revered and harkened to and loved and lost and grieved: [...]
- (intransitive, US, figuratively) To hark back, to return or revert (to a subject, etc.), to allude to, to evoke, to long or pine for (a past event or era).
2005, Carol Padden, Tom L. Humphries, Inside Deaf Culture, page 48:Bell argued that the manual approach was "backwards," and harkened to a primitive age where humans used gesture and pantomime.
Usage notes
Where sense 2 is concerned, the bare form harken has been used since the 1980s, though some authorities frown upon this and prefer the traditional form hark back.
Derived terms
References
- “harken”, in The Century Dictionary , New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911, →OCLC.
- Merriam-Webster’s dictionary of English usage, 1995, page 497
- “Hark/Hearken”, Paul Brians, Common Errors in English Usage, (2nd Edition, November, 2008)
Anagrams
Dutch
Etymology
From early modern Dutch harcken, hercken, from hark (“rake”).
Pronunciation
Verb
harken
- to rake, to use a rake on
Inflection
Related terms
Descendants
German
Pronunciation
Verb
harken (weak, third-person singular present harkt, past tense harkte, past participle geharkt, auxiliary haben)
- (regional, Northern Germany) to rake
Conjugation
Conjugation of
harken (
weak, auxiliary
haben)
1Rare except in very formal contexts; alternative in würde normally preferred.
Composed forms of
harken (
weak, auxiliary
haben)
Further reading
- “harken” in Digitales Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache
- “harken” in OpenThesaurus.de