hanker

American

[hang-ker] / ˈhæŋ kər /

verb (used without object)

to have a restless or incessant longing (often followed by after, for, or an infinitive).

hanker British

/ ˈhæŋkə /

verb

to have a yearning (for something or to do something)

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Related Words

See yearn.

Other Word Forms

hankerer noun
hankering noun

Etymology

Origin of hanker

First recorded in 1595–1605; from early Dutch dialect hankeren (cognate with Dutch hunkeren ), frequentative of hangen “to hang”; hang

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

We do often hanker to leave town on multimonth adventures that break us out of our routines.

From The Wall Street Journal • Mar. 6, 2026

Intelligence officials have repeatedly made clear they hanker after the same generative AI tools that promise to revolutionize swaths of business and modernize economies.

From Seattle Times • May 13, 2024

Those communities also hanker for weather radar to track incoming squalls, Way says.

From Science Magazine • Mar. 8, 2023

When bat droppings are scarce, female Neotrogla hanker for sperm, which is encased in nutritious capsules called spermatophores.

From New York Times • Jan. 10, 2023

We hanker to go on, even in the face of plain evidence that long, long lives are not necessarily pleasurable in the kind of society we have arranged thus far.

From "The Lives of a Cell" by Lewis Thomas

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023