harken
verbUK /ˈhɑːk(ə)n/ · US /ˈhɑɹkən/
Etymology See hearken
1
US, Alternative, Ambitransitive Alternative spelling of hearken: to hear, to listen, to have regard.
- 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.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:
- How, then, am I mad? Harken! and observe how healthily—how calmly I can tell you the whole story.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:
1 more example
- [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: [...]1942, William Faulkner, “The Bear”, in Go Down, Moses, New York, N.Y.: Random House, →OCLC, section 5, page 326:
2
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).
- Bell argued that the manual approach was "backwards," and harkened to a primitive age where humans used gesture and pantomime.2005, Carol Padden, Tom L. Humphries, Inside Deaf Culture, page 48:
- Derived terms
- harken back, harkener