hark
Americanverb (used without object)
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harks,
present (3rd person singular)
-
harked,
past participle, past
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harking
present participle
verb (used with object)
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harks,
present (3rd person singular)
-
harked,
past participle, past
-
harking
present participle
noun
verb phrase
verb
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
-
harksimple
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harkssimple
-
have harkedperfect
-
has harkedperfect
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am harkingprogressive
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are harkingprogressive
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is harkingprogressive
-
have been harkingperfect progressive
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has been harkingperfect progressive
Past
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harkedsimple
-
had harkedperfect
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was harkingprogressive
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were harkingprogressive
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had been harkingperfect progressive
Future
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.
Vocabulary lists containing hark
Christmas Carol Vocab: A Lyrical Lexicon
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The Tempest
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Words for Carolers
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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.
See Examples For:
Indisputably, there are signs—some of which hark back to the dot-com era—that it is.
From Barron's ● May 29, 2026
The commuters in “Le Métro” hark back to his early streetcar scenes but now there’s an air of mystery to the straphangers, with the central figure’s face obscured and bisected by a subway pole.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 10, 2025
Its title appears to hark back to the singer's 2012 hit Boyfriend, featuring the line "swag, swag, swag, on you".
From BBC ● Jul. 11, 2025
The 11 songs on the album bridge storytelling with classic country and folk sounds that hark back to the ‘70s, a la songs like the Eagles’ “Wasted Time.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 10, 2025
Further west, he and Fa often camped in summer to gather lime hark for rope-making; but this part looked unfamiliar.
From "Wolf Brother" by Michelle Paver
Scottish Championship side Dunfermline Athletic have released a shirt that harks back to the one they wore during the 1994-95 season.
From BBC ● Aug. 9, 2026
Warsh’s preference for saying little harks back to an era when central banks were more mysterious, impersonal institutions.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 30, 2026
In both tone and structure, it harks back to the kind of theatrical properties that May and Lotta excelled in during the first half of the 20th century.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 28, 2026
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
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
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
And what a contrast it was as the 22-year-old Northern Ireland right-back was the shining symbol of a Liverpool display that harked back to their Premier League title-winning best as Real Madrid were swept aside.
From BBC ● Nov. 4, 2025
“I love the scale of the check. I thought it harked back to the original pinafore she wore in the first ‘Beetlejuice,’” says Atwood.
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 24, 2024
It also harked back to her own traditional Orthodox upbringing where the home was run by one dominating figure with strict rules and regulations.
From "The Color of Water: A Black Man's Tribute to His White Mother" by James McBride
World Cup match on Spanish-language television network platforms, harking back to the 1994 World Cup, the first played in the U.S. that also attracted record TV audiences.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 14, 2026
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
This mysterious commodity is the comfort blanket in times of turmoil - usually harking back to glory days and happier times.
From BBC ● Jan. 8, 2026
Maybe it was harking back to the rivalry between their fathers, who fought a controversial draw in their second and final meeting in 1993.
From BBC ● Nov. 16, 2025
Say that us'll soon be harking for the cuckoo in the greenwood, and look see, give her this; 'tis a little white daisy I picked.
From The Passionate Elopement by Compton MacKenzie
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
