hanker

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.

• IPA^(key): /ˈhæŋkə(ɹ)/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -æŋkə(ɹ)

hanker (third-person singular simple present hankers, present participle hankering, simple past and past participle hankered)

1. To crave, want or desire.

   Synonym: covet

   If you hanker for chocolate, you'll like this fudge recipe.

   • 1874, Thomas Hardy, Far from the Madding Crowd. […], volume II, London: Smith, Elder & Co., […], →OCLC, page 289:

     “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.”

   • 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:

     “Baked, they were tough; and even boiled, they warn’t things for a hungry man to hanker after.”

   • 1889, Jerome K. Jerome, chapter 7, in Three Men in a Boat […] ‎^[1]:

     I objected. I don’t know whether it is that I am built wrong, but I never did seem to hanker after tombstones myself.

   • 1894, Mark Twain, chapter 1, in Tom Sawyer Abroad:

     […] it made us heroes, and that was what Tom Sawyer had always been hankering to be.

   • 1915, W[illiam] Somerset Maugham, chapter LXI, in Of Human Bondage, New York, N.Y.: George H[enry] Doran Company, →OCLC:

     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.

   • 1957 February, Henry Maxwell, “A Sentimental Journey”, in Railway Magazine, page 82:

     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.

   • 2012 October 13, “Very good, sir”, in The Economist‎^[2], →ISSN:

     […] the newly rich hanker after old aristocratic glitz.

• Usually used with for, as in the example above; after may also be used.

• Douglas Harper (2001–2025), “hanker”, in Online Etymology Dictionary.
• “hanker”, in Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, 1996–present.

• harken

hanker m or f

1. indefinite plural of hank

• hankar

hanker m or f

1. indefinite feminine plural of hank