harken

See hearken

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈhɑːk(ə)n/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈhɑɹkən/
• Rhymes: -ɑː(ɹ)kən
• Hyphenation: hark‧en

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.

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.

• harken back

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

• “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)

• hanker

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

• Audio:

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɑrkən

harken

1. to rake, to use a rake on

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.

• hark

• Afrikaans: hark
• → Papiamentu: harka
• → Sranan Tongo: ar'ari, har'hari
  • → Caribbean Javanese: ari-ari

• Audio:

  (file)

• Audio:

  (file)

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

1. (regional, Northern Germany) to rake

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