Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Worrying; fretful; anxious; solicitous.
  • Distressing; perplexing; giving anxiety: now scarcely used except in the phrase carking care or cares.

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

  • adjective Distressing; worrying; perplexing; corroding.

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

  • verb Present participle of cark.

Etymologies

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Examples

  • Do not," I said sternly to David Attenborough as the camera pulled back during Wednesday's episode of Frozen Planet BBC1 to reveal two polar bear cubs trotting gamely up to their mighty mother as she punched holes in the Arctic ice to find fishy food, "show me two polar bear cubs carking it tonight, Attenborough.

    TV review: Perez Hilton: Superfan; Frozen Planet 2011

  • Yet we had watched his smooth brow furrow and corrugate as under some carking care or devouring sorrow.

    The Minions of Midas 2010

  • Such is the nature of our intimate, carking, rueful relationship with William Holden, on the surface one of the Hollywood century's typical all-purpose leading men, but beneath it the keeper of poisoned secrets, and a living embodiment of America's postwar self-doubt and idealistic failure.

    William Holden--noir hero? Ed Gorman 2008

  • Thus all is purged from the grossness of sense, from the carking cares and foul vices of the World; and rides there, on its Clothes-horse; as, on a Pegasus, might some skyey Messenger, or purified Apparition, visiting our low Earth.

    The Obama-Spears-Hilton photo-op. Ann Althouse 2008

  • Such is the nature of our intimate, carking, rueful relationship with William Holden, on the surface one of the Hollywood century's typical all-purpose leading men, but beneath it the keeper of poisoned secrets, and a living embodiment of America's postwar self-doubt and idealistic failure.

    Archive 2008-07-01 Ed Gorman 2008

  • Day; or carking Cares to disturb her Sleep by Night; not being so divided from Neighbours, as to render it a Desart; nor so near, as to have their

    The Lining of the Patch-Work Screen 2008

  • A yellow girl79 whose court cures every carking care;

    The Book of The Thousand Nights And A Night 2006

  • Day; or carking Cares to disturb her Sleep by Night; not being so divided from Neighbours, as to render it a Desart; nor so near, as to have their

    The Lining of the Patch-Work Screen 2008

  • Rossetti said of all his male friends, Hughes was the sweetest and had the most ingenuous nature, the least carking and querulous, and the freest from envy, hatred and malice, and all uncharitableness.

    Archive 2008-03-01 Hermes 2008

  • The young gentlemen were prematurely full of carking anxieties.

    Dombey and Son 2007

  • This provoked a letter calling on him to rethink his rethink, signed by 97 people including famous foodsters Jamie Oliver and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and supermodel David Gandy plus, less eye-catchingly, learned representatives of many prominent organisations including those dedicated to all the key ways of carking it: cancer, heart disease, liver disease, high blood pressure, etc.

    The tech giants’ diet is bad for everyone’s health | David Mitchell David Mitchell 2021

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  • "Set free from carking care and amply provided for, we were able to give most of our time and energy to our real profession – which, of course, is Sapping – and so moving northward and then westward we presently arrived, after a leisurely but eventful journey, much of it very comfortably underground, at the eastern border of Bombardy."

    The Wind on the Moon by Eric Linklater, p 335 of the New York Review of Books edition

    July 19, 2013

  • "Set free from carking care and amply provided for, we were able to give most of our time and energy to our real profession – which, of course, is Sapping – and so moving northward and then westward we presently arrived, after a leisurely but eventful journey, much of it very comfortably underground, at the eastern border of Bombardy."

    The Wind on the Moon by Eric Linklater, p 335 of the New York Review of Books edition

    July 19, 2013