cark en · VERB · etymology 1
Pronunciation
- /kɑː(ɹ)k/
- (Southern-England) audio
Etymology
From Middle English carken (“to be anxious, worry”, intransitive), from Old English *carcian ("to be sorrowful, worry"; found in becarcian (“to worry about, care for”)), a frequentative form of Old English carian (“to care”), equivalent to care + -k. The Middle English carken, also charken (“to load (sth.); to bear (crops); to burden, harass”, transitive), from Old Northern French carquier (“to load, burden”), from Latin carricāre (“to load”), related to Old French chargier (“to load”), is a different word often confused with the above.
Meanings
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(intransitive, obsolete) To be filled with worry, solicitude, or troubles.
[W]ho vvould not rather Sleep Quietly upon a Hammock, vvithout either Cares in his Head, or Crudities in his Stomach, then lye Carking upon a Bed of State, vvith the Qualms and Tvvinges that accompany Surfeits and Exceſs?
1692, Roger L’Estrange, “[Miscellany Fables.] Fab[le] CCCLXXXIII. A Spider and the Gout [Reflexion].”, in Fables, of Æsop and Other Eminent Mythologists: […], London: […] R[ichard] Sare, […], →OCLC, page 355:
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(intransitive, obsolete, transitive) To bring worry, vexation, or anxiety.
Carnal pleasures are the sins of youth: ambition and the love of power, the sins of middle age: covetousness and carking cares, the crimes of old age.
1831, Adam Clarke, Commentary on the Bible, Comment on 2 Timothy 2: 22[W]e shall see how in morbid melancholy this sense of the unreality of things may become a carking pain, and even lead to suicide.
1902, William James, “Lecture 3”, in The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature […] , New York, N.Y.; London: Longmans, Green, and Co. […], →OCLC:Thanks to that penny he had just spent so recklessly [on a newspaper] he would pass a happy hour, taken, for once, out of his anxious, despondent, miserable self. It irritated him shrewdly to know that these moments of respite from carking care would not be shared with his poor wife, with careworn, troubled Ellen.
1913, Mrs. [Marie] Belloc Lowndes, chapter I, in The Lodger, London: Methuen, →OCLC; republished in Novels of Mystery: The Lodger; The Story of Ivy; What Really Happened, New York, N.Y.: Longmans, Green and Co., […], [1933], →OCLC, page 0056:
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(archaic, intransitive) To labor anxiously.
Why for sluggards cark and moil?
1849, Charles Kingsley, Alton Locke's Song:
Forms
| Spelling | Features | Labels | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| carks | Number=Sing, Person=3, Tense=Pres | lexicographic | |
| carking | Tense=Pres, VerbForm=Part | lexicographic | |
| carked | Tense=Past, VerbForm=Part | lexicographic | |
| carked | Tense=Past | lexicographic |