Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To listen; lend the ear; attend or give heed to what is uttered; hear with attention, obedience, or compliance.
  • To hear by listening.
  • To hear with attention; regard.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • verb To hearken.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • verb Alternative spelling of hearken ‘to listen, hear, regard’, more common form in the US.
  • verb figuratively, US 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).

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • verb listen; used mostly in the imperative

Etymologies

Sorry, no etymologies found.

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Examples

  • This, of the former President Bill Clinton with candidate, the wife Hillary Clinton and Chelsea, all three of them together, the former first family, and what they did is essentially are trying to show a personal support, family support, but also to kind of harken back to the days of the White House when times were good, when the economy was strong, when the country was at peace.

    CNN Transcript Dec 27, 2007 2007

  • Those stripes kind of harken back to an old-fashioned ice cream parlor, and we've got the ice cream in a bowl.

    CNN Transcript Apr 15, 2005 2005

  • "So we kind of harken back to that, when anything goes."

    NY1 - Top Stories 2010

  • When I look at "Today in Sports" I harken back to that day.

    Len Berman: Top 5 Sports Stories Len Berman 2010

  • "We need to kind of harken back a little bit more to that quality of living and that generosity of space," says Mr. Pei, referring to pre-war buildings.

    Peis Partner in Manhattan Dana Rubinstein 2011

  • The financial gymnastics harken back to Silicon Valley's late 1990s dot-com boom, when companies introduced terms like "eyeballs," or the number of people visiting a website, to reinforce how much traction they had with consumers, even if the start-up had no revenue.

    Groupon's Accounting Lingo Gets Scrutiny Shayndi Raice 2011

  • Your deluded, vile, racist leaflets harken back to the awful days of the Reich's 'Nuremberg Laws'.

    Archive 2009-04-01 Dungeekin 2009

  • Further, these "shut down the vote" campaigns harken back to Operation Eagle Eye, when a young attorney named William Rehnquist led a team of Republicans who disenfranchised black and Latino overs in Phoenix.

    David A. Love: The Corporate Financing of Voter Suppression David A. Love 2010

  • Your deluded, vile, racist leaflets harken back to the awful days of the Reich's 'Nuremberg Laws'.

    Griffin, The 'C' Word and the BNP Dungeekin 2009

  • I long for the "golden days" of our country as well, but my wishes harken back to times when civil rights were being granted, not questioned; when attending college was not seen as being elitist, but rather something to which one aspired; when my ideological opponents knew that I was not their enemy, but just someone striving toward the same American dream via a different path.

    Martin Maidenberg: Defying Gravitas -- Season of the Witch Martin Maidenberg 2010

Comments

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  • Not to be confused with horken.

    December 23, 2008