hark

American  

[hahrk] / hɑrk /

verb (used without object)

• harks,
  present (3rd person singular)
• harked,
  past participle,  past
• harking
  present participle

1. to listen attentively; hearken.

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verb (used with object)

• harks,
  present (3rd person singular)
• harked,
  past participle,  past
• harking
  present participle

1. Archaic. to listen to; hear.

noun

1. a hunter's shout to hounds, as to encourage them in following the scent.

verb phrase

1. hark back

   1. (of hounds) to return along the course in order to regain a lost scent.

   2. to return to a previous subject or point; revert.

      He kept harking back to his early days in vaudeville.

hark British  

/ hɑːk /

verb

1. (intr; usually imperative) to listen; pay attention

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Other Word Forms

Derived Forms

• unharked
  adjective

Inflected Forms

Participles

• harking
  present
• harked
  past

Conjugated Forms

Present

• hark
  simple
• harks
  simple
• have harked
  perfect
• has harked
  perfect
• am harking
  progressive
• are harking
  progressive
• is harking
  progressive
• have been harking
  perfect progressive
• has been harking
  perfect progressive

Past

• harked
  simple
• had harked
  perfect
• was harking
  progressive
• were harking
  progressive
• had been harking
  perfect progressive

Future

• will hark
  simple
• will have harked
  perfect
• will be harking
  progressive
• will have been harking
  perfect progressive

Etymology

Origin of hark

1175–1225; Middle English herken, earlier herkien, Old English *heorcian; cognate with Old Frisian herkia, harkia; akin to Middle Dutch harken, Middle High German, German horchen. See hearken, hear

Explanation

Hark! This is an old fashioned word for “listen up!” Hark also means “to look back.” If you ride a horse to school, your behavior harks back to the days before cars. Hark is an order to pay attention and listen carefully, but it also means to go back to or remember something from the past. Hark has an interesting origin: it comes from the term "to hark back," which was when hunting dogs retraced the scent of their prey when they had lost it to try to pick it up again. Using hark these days sounds very literary and old fashioned. It harks back to ye olde times.

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

hark harks harked harking

Indisputably, there are signs—some of which hark back to the dot-com era—that it is.

From Barron's ● May 29, 2026

There are passages for unaccompanied chorus that hark back to church music of the Renaissance and moments that seem like Dada before its time.

From The Wall Street Journal ● May 15, 2026

When built, it was intended as a "hark back to the history of bathing machines in Margate", which were used frequently in the town during Victorian times.

From BBC ● Feb. 19, 2025

When I think of them, I hark them to the Harlem Renaissance versions of “Dreamgirls.”

From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 4, 2024

Sometimes in public, hearing a stranger, I’d hark back to my past.

From "Hunger of Memory" by Richard Rodriguez

As if to underscore the radical turn these artists were making, the paintings are hung on an ornate plum-red wallpaper in a wainscoted gallery that harks back to the Grand Palais’s look.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 25, 2026

Culp, 63, works regularly with GE suppliers to improve performance through lean management, a process that harks back to the statistical process controls and continuous improvement practiced by manufacturing companies in postwar Japan.

From Barron's ● Jun. 19, 2026

For many in China, the tragedy harks back to the 2000s, a period of regular, deadly coal mining disasters, which is widely thought to have been left in the past.

From BBC ● May 25, 2026

While not pink in colour, the name of the April full Moon harks back to ancient traditions before the advent of the modern calendar.

From BBC ● Apr. 2, 2026

He painted it from the heart: the scene harks back to his time in the Borinage, and it reflects his attachment to his own family and to the idea of family, to the ideal family.

From "Vincent and Theo: The Van Gogh Brothers" by Deborah Heiligman

The message harked back to the old U.S. policy of further entwining the American and Chinese economies, breaking with an approach pioneered during the first Trump administration to untangle business ties, largely for national-security reasons.

From The Wall Street Journal ● May 14, 2026

It harked back to the end of last season, when chanting against the ownership began.

From BBC ● Apr. 22, 2026

In February 1947 the couturier Christian Dior harked back to the rosy autochrome with his first collection, “Corolle,” named for the petaled cup of a flower and later christened the New Look.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 21, 2025

But before that, the Disney Channel was bumbling along since its launch in 1983, mostly broadcasting kids cartoons that harked back to the company’s animation renaissance in the early 1990s.

From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 24, 2024

Now the rebels harked to the proceedings; we saw them watching from the shore, though they could not hear.

From "The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume II: The Kingdom on the Waves" by M.T. Anderson

Delightful though the show is, there’s something dispiritingly circular, or insular, about the potential best musical winner of 2026 harking back to musicals of the middle decades of the 20th century.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 5, 2026

But that's all changed - now, you see a small visual representation of what's happening with dots on a screen, harking back to how the game looked in the 00s.

From BBC ● Nov. 1, 2025

The harking back to the Civil War isn’t in vain.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 20, 2025

And harking back to Sam Mendes’ polarizing 2003 revival, I wistfully reflected on the broken-doll quality that Bernadette Peters brought to a character formed in the battleship mode of Ethel Merman, the original Rose.

From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 31, 2025

But, for all that, Sandy’s idea was correct, as he found, after harking backwards and forwards two or three times.

From The Sapphire Cross by George Manville Fenn