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Words, grammatical forms and meanings linked to the ontology.

hanker en · VERB

Pronunciation

  • (Southern-England) audio
  • /ˈhæŋkə(ɹ)/

Etymology

With a secondary frequentative suffix -er, ultimately pointing to Proto-Germanic *hankōną, an iterative to *hanhaną (“to hang”). Related to Dutch hunkeren (“to crave”), which continues the zero-grade iterative.

Meanings

  1. To crave, want or desire.
    • If you hanker for chocolate, you'll like this fudge recipe.
    • Very greatly, as a boy, used I to hanker to ride within those friendly-looking cabs and to look out through those shining spectacles along those straight clean boilers towards those familiar flared-out chimneys. Now it was to be. 1957 February 14, Henry Maxwell, “A Sentimental Journey”, in Railway Magazine, page 82:
    • “Baked, they were tough; and even boiled, they warn’t things for a hungry man to hanker after.” 1880, Mark Twain [pseudonym] (Samuel L[anghorne] Clemens), chapter XXII, in A Tramp Abroad; […], Hartford, Conn.: American Publishing Company; London: Chatto & Windus, →OCLC, page 220:
    • She bade him good-night and hurried down the road. Next day he took her in a little watch with a brooch to pin on her dress. She had been hankering for it. 1915, W[illiam] Somerset Maugham, chapter LXI, in Of Human Bondage, New York, N.Y.: George H[enry] Doran Company, →OCLC:
    • “O ’tis true enough, faith. I cannot understand Farmer Boldwood being such a fool at his time of life as to ho and hanker after thik^([sic]) woman in the way ’a do, and she not care a bit about en.” 1874, Thomas Hardy, Far from the Madding Crowd. […], volume II, London: Smith, Elder & Co., […], →OCLC, page 289:
    • […] it made us heroes, and that was what Tom Sawyer had always been hankering to be. 1894, Mark Twain, chapter 1, in Tom Sawyer Abroad:
    • I objected. I don’t know whether it is that I am built wrong, but I never did seem to hanker after tombstones myself. 1889, Jerome K. Jerome, chapter 7, in Three Men in a Boat […] :
    • […] the newly rich hanker after old aristocratic glitz. 2012 October 13, “Very good, sir”, in The Economist, →ISSN, archived from the original on 12 Jan 2025:

Forms

SpellingFeaturesLabelsSource
hankering Tense=Pres, VerbForm=Part lexicographic
hankers Number=Sing, Person=3, Tense=Pres lexicographic
hankered Tense=Past, VerbForm=Part lexicographic
hankered Tense=Past lexicographic

Deriveds

hankerer · hankering

Synonyms

covet

Translations (25)

sc chègliere (to want) · sc chèrfere (to want) · es querer (to want) · bg копнея (to want) · nl hunkeren (to want) · uk дуже хотіти (to want) · cs dychtit (to want) · mi tōmina (to want) · ru жаждать (to want) · de begehren (to want) · mi koroingo (to want) · pl wzdychać (to want) · it volere (to want) · uk жадати (to want) · sc chèrzere (to want) · pl tęsknić (to want) · bg жадувам (to want) · uk палко бажати (to want) · cs prahnout (to want) · de verlangen (to want) · cs toužit (to want) · it desiderare (to want) · mi ohia (to want) · mi hōkaka (to want) · ru хотеть (to want)