Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- v. To burden or be burdened with trouble; worry.
- n. A worry; a trouble: carks and cares.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. A load; a burden; a weight; specifically, an old measure of weight for wool, equal to the thirtieth part of a sarplar.
- n. A burden of care; a state of anxious solicitude; care; concern; trouble; distress.
- To load; burden; load or oppress with grief, anxiety, or care; worry; perplex; vex.
- To bring to be by care or anxiety; make by carking.
- To be full of care, anxious, solicitous, or concerned.
Wiktionary
- v. Eye dialect spelling of caulk.
- v. obsolete, intransitive To be filled with worry, solicitude, or troubles.
- v. obsolete, transitive To bring worry, vexation, or anxiety.
- n. obsolete A noxious or corroding worry.
- n. obsolete The state of being filled with worry.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. Archaic. A noxious or corroding care; solicitude; worry.
- v. rare To be careful, anxious, solicitous, or troubled in mind; to worry or grieve.
- v. rare To vex; to worry; to make by anxious care or worry.
WordNet 3.0
- v. disturb in mind or make uneasy or cause to be worried or alarmed
Etymologies
- From Middle English carken ("to be anxious"), from Old English carcian, becarcian ("to be anxious, be anxious about, care for, take charge of, look after"), from car- ("care") + formative -cian (suffix). (Wiktionary)
- Middle English carken, from Norman French carquier, to burden, load, from Late Latin carricāre; see cargo. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“She said, It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that when the ship sped on her course, Kamar al-Zaman returned to the garden in cark and care; but — anon he rented the place of its owner and hired a man to help him in irrigating the trees.”
“Now this King was become a very old man, weakened and wasted with age and sickness and decrepitude; for he had lived an hundred and fourscore years and had no child, male or female, by reason whereof he was ever in cark and care from morning to night and from night to morn.”
“So he rose up and went out and threaded the streets awhile, but only increased in cark and care.”
“So he abode in cark and care and chagrin from morn to night and from night to morn.”
“a soul nor return a reply; and reaching the garden and sitting down in cark and care he threw dust on his head and buffeted his cheeks. —”
“= "I fail at life." balancing act: Sorry to meatjack, but I have never run across "cark" before.”
“Sorry to meatjack, but I have never run across "cark" before.”
“If whomever found him had never caught him before they shoulda shat on it. balancing act: Sorry to meatjack, but I have never run across "cark" before.”
“And they show that airport cark parks are big business, raking in around $244 million in the 2007-2008 financial year.”
Why Airport Parking Is Such A Rip-Off | Lifehacker Australia
“Idibia's statement was quite specific, confirming that he was "still intact", with no immediate plans to cark it.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘cark’.
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Animal voices
wuff, snort, chirp, baa, moo, meow, oink, bark, woof, grr, purr, hiss and 24 more...
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Car- Trouble
career, careen, carom, carnage, cartwheeling, carter, caribou, carabiner, caracara, caracole, carafe, carageenan and 29 more...
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Words I like
A list contrived for the sole purpose of storing words I like to include in my writing; words that inspire or carry power for me.
contrite, meadow, sward, ossary, calumny, moribund, necropolis, chthonic, murmur, erstwhile, chime, beryl and 63 more...
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Joycean Vocab
You ain't read no English til you read Joyce.
rasher, cygnet, usquebaugh, ephebe, entelechy, kish, caul, vicereine, atelier, daguerreotype, communard, connubial and 99 more...
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Verecund, flivver, etc
Just some words I happen to enjoy. Some thread-worn, some not.
yegg, yob, verecund, amatory, fermata, threepenny, gruntled, flivver, gamboge, decolletage, ordure, nudnik and 173 more...
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colleen's words
yellow, green, pie, blue, fur, people, incense, book, brown, avuncular, mountain, fog and 1316 more...
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.names
remy, rolf, theobald, jerrick, dray, theade, torfin, roderick, eleazer, keller, leif, melrick and 149 more...
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Eocene (Eosin) (Eoscene) (Eoseen) Eng...
Dawn Words in English
swefnum, swefna, secgan, goste, wealhstod, wald-swathu, hearpan, hwaet, leothcraeft, beorhtost, wyrd, dustsceawung and 131 more...
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ktrey's wordlist
Words that I like.
Many may be lexicographically impotent due to a lack of citations and definition. Hopefully I'll be able to rectify this eventually.velleity, dispositive, bloviate, bibulous, fungible, concupiscence, avuncular, carnaptious, thrawn, hypocoristic, diegesis, lagniappe and 928 more...
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Archaic
Because they just don't make 'em like they used to.
comeling, circuition, assentment, advisement, accompts, apertness, larum, soothfastness, deperdition, marish, covin, tinct and 166 more...
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samoritan's Words
moxie, zarf, crepuscular, serenity, halcyon, powerfuller, instant classic, abecedary, trilobite, doomsters, 'da bome, evanescence and 149 more...
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Moby-Dick
Interesting words and usages.
hypo, spile, hunks, grapnel, squitchy, skrimshander, monkey jacket, direful, grego, wrapall, dreadnaught, bosky and 158 more...
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Umbersorrow
Intangible, anthropic.
States of being are listed on oofy.njiju, glark, deplore, afterlithe, tagmass, spuriosity, forkful, chelation, oding, ploat, botnet, quedeship and 477 more...
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5-0
Hecko, words! I’m so happy I’ve found you. I want to keep you all and never want to lose you again. I hope you like it here.
amscray, thistledown, tine, tinsel, pungent, snarl, wail, lanky, viscid, dawdle, luminous, stow and 2719 more...
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centipedia's list
words to relieve the cark and cares of the world
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Foyle's Philavery
A selection from Christopher Foyle's book, Foyle's Philavery: A Treasury of Unusual Words, which I was delighted to learn about here.
abligurition, arcifinious, batterfang, bottomry, broggle, brool, cacoepy, cark, dangleation, dasyphyllous, dentiloquy, deglute and 93 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for cark.
qroqqa The two words are unlikely to be related. 'Cark' "die" is only very recently attested; it could be short for 'carcass'. Aug 12, 2008
yarb For nowadays, the whale-fishery furnishes an asylum for many romantic, melancholy, and absent-minded young men, disgusted with the carking care of earth, and seeking sentiment in tar and blubber.
- Melville, Moby-Dick, ch. 35 Jul 24, 2008
yarb ...just as the body is liable to awful diseases and harsh pain, so we see the mind liable to carking care and grief and fear...
- Lucretius, De Rerum Natura, 3. 459-461, tr. Rouse Jun 25, 2008
yarb - Gareth died at a rave, did he?
- Yeh, the soft twat, in-a back of a van. Comes out of jail that very fuckin day an to celebrate OD's on meth. Carked it. The prick.
- Niall Griffiths, Sheepshagger Jan 15, 2008
reesetee I wonder how it went from meaning "worry" to meaning "drop dead"? (The "worry" definition being archaic.) Oct 4, 2007
arby This sounds vaguely Irish to me - like they're saying cork with an Irish accent. Oct 4, 2007
yarb "To cark it" = to expire, drop dead.
E.g.
- "How's your uncle Bernie these days?"
- "Who? Oh, him: he carked it yonks ago." Oct 3, 2007
reesetee Maybe Carl carked a lot? Oct 3, 2007
uselessness Ha, there was a guy who went by the name Cark on a (now defunct) web site I used to frequent. I always assumed it was just a funny-sounding typo for what I figured was his real name, Carl. Oct 3, 2007
reesetee To worry or to be burdened with worries.
I've been doing some serious carking lately, boyoboy. Oct 3, 2007