harken

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See also: Harken

English

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Etymology

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See hearken

Pronunciation

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Verb

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harken (third-person singular simple present harkens, present participle harkening, simple past and past participle harkened)

  1. (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: [...]
  2. (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

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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

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Descendants

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  • Sranan Tongo: arki
    • Aukan: aliki
    • >? Saramaccan: háika

References

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Anagrams

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Dutch

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Etymology

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From early modern Dutch harcken, hercken, from hark (rake).

Pronunciation

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Verb

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harken

  1. to rake, to use a rake on

Conjugation

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Conjugation of harken (weak)
infinitive harken
past singular harkte
past participle geharkt
infinitive harken
gerund harken n
present tense past tense
1st person singular hark harkte
2nd person sing. (jij) harkt, hark2 harkte
2nd person sing. (u) harkt harkte
2nd person sing. (gij) harkt harkte
3rd person singular harkt harkte
plural harken harkten
subjunctive sing.1 harke harkte
subjunctive plur.1 harken harkten
imperative sing. hark
imperative plur.1 harkt
participles harkend geharkt
1) Archaic. 2) In case of inversion.
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Descendants

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German

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Pronunciation

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Verb

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harken (weak, third-person singular present harkt, past tense harkte, past participle geharkt, auxiliary haben)

  1. (regional, Northern Germany) to rake

Conjugation

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Further reading

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  • harken” in Digitales Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache
  • harken” in OpenThesaurus.de