yearn
Formsyearns, yearning, yearned
Formsyearns, yearning, yearned
- 1To have a strong desire or longing for something, often something absent, lost, or belonging to the past, or to want very much to do something.
Many city workers yearn for a quiet life in the country.
After six months at sea, the crew yearned to set foot on dry land.
UsageFollowed by for + noun or to + verb: yearn for a quiet life, yearn to go home.
Similarlong, pine, ache, hanker
Note
Older printings spell the verb yern, as in John Fletcher's The Tragedie of Bonduca (c. 1613): “my heart-strings yern to do.”
Checked 2 Nov 2026 · 3 facts
- John Fletcher wrote Bonduca. en.wikipedia.org
- Bonduca was first published in 1647; circa 1613 is its performance date. en.wikipedia.org
- An older printing uses yern in the quoted phrase. en.wiktionary.org
- 2Of music, words, or a performer: to express or convey strong desire or longing.
In the slow movement, the cellos yearn beneath a thin, high melody.
Every page of her late poems yearns, though she never names what she wants.
Similarache
Note
Personification is built into this use: the music or the words long as a person would. Keats, in The Eve of St. Agnes (1820), writes of “The music, yearning like a God in pain.”
Checked 2 Nov 2026 · 3 facts
- John Keats wrote The Eve of St. Agnes, first published in 1820. gutenberg.org
- The quoted words occur in Keats's poem, in the narrator's description. rpo.library.utoronto.ca
- The description personifies the music. gutenberg.org
- 3To feel strong affection, love, sympathy, or a similar emotion toward someone.
I have left your mother in the next room. Her heart yearns towards you.
1711, [Joseph Addison; Richard Steele et al.], “SATURDAY, July 21, 1711”But supper had cheered Tant' Sannie, who found it impossible longer to maintain that decorous silence, and whose heart yearned over the youth.
1883, Ralph Iron [pseudonym; Olive Schreiner], “Tant’ Sannie Holds an Upsitting, and Gregory Writes a Letter”Note
The heart is the usual subject here, or in older writing the bowels, and it yearns toward, over or upon a person rather than for a thing. In the King James Bible of 1611, Joseph's “bowels did yerne upon his brother.” The preposition carries the tenderness. Put for in its place and the sentence drifts back to plain longing.
Checked 2 Nov 2026 · 3 facts
- The King James Bible was first published in 1611. archive.org
- Genesis 43:30 describes Joseph using the quoted wording; upon conventionally regularizes the original vpon. en.wiktionary.org
- Historical examples use heart or bowels as the subject, with toward, over or upon introducing a person. en.wiktionary.org
Less common meanings
- 4To suffer anguish or sorrow, as in grief or mourning.
Note
Grief once had a share in this verb, which could describe a heart aching at someone else's misfortune. In Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy (1759), Tristram's father and uncle Toby have hearts that "yearn'd with sympathy" for a poor fellow's distress. The pattern, a heart that yearns with a feeling, is the one to borrow for period writing. The meaning is obsolete, and modern readers will hear longing. Its causative partner pains someone else.
Checked 1 Nov 2026 · 4 facts
- Yearn formerly meant to suffer distress or grief. gutenberg.org
- Laurence Sterne wrote Tristram Shandy, whose first two volumes were published in 1759, despite their 1760 title-page date. laurencesternetrust.org.uk
- Tristram narrates that his father's and uncle Toby's hearts 'yearn'd with sympathy' for the distressed Corporal Trim. en.wikisource.org
- The corresponding transitive sense means to pain or grieve someone. gutenberg.org
- 5To stir strong affection, love, sympathy, or similar feelings in someone; also, to grieve or pain someone.
Wants to sneeze and cannot do it! / Now it yearns me, thrills me, stings me, / Now with rapturous torment wrings me, / Now says “Sneeze, you fool; get through it.”
1834, Leigh Hunt, “A Pinch of Snuff (Concluded.)”It yernes me not, if men my Garments weare; / Nor care I who doth feed vpon my coſt: / Such outward things dwell not in my deſires. / But if it be a ſinne to couet Honor, / I am the moſt offending Soule aliue.
1599, William Shakespeare, “The Life of Henry the Fift”Note
Here the cause does the yearning and the person moved is the object, often behind an impersonal it. Shakespeare has “it would yern your heart to see it” in The Merry Wives of Windsor and “It yernes me not” (it does not grieve me) in Henry V. The verb is thus the causative partner of both the affectionate meaning and the grieving one. Leigh Hunt still writes “it yearns me” in 1834, of a sneeze.
Checked 1 Nov 2026 · 5 facts
- The transitive construction makes the affected person or heart the object and occurs with impersonal 'it'. en.wikisource.org
- Shakespeare includes 'it would yern your heart to see it' in The Merry Wives of Windsor; Mistress Quickly speaks the line to Falstaff. en.wikisource.org
- Henry V contains 'It yernes me not', spoken by King Henry, with the sense 'it does not grieve me'. firstfolio.bodleian.ox.ac.uk
- This transitive sense covers causing affection or sympathy as well as causing grief or pain. en.wiktionary.org
- Leigh Hunt used 'it yearns me' about an impending sneeze in 1834, in 'A Pinch of Snuff (Concluded.)', published on June 25. en.wiktionary.org
- 6A strong desire or longing for someone or something.
"After he had made a record date with us in 1935, I always had a yearn for Ben," he said years later.
2010, Frank Buchmann-Moller, Someone to Watch Over Me: The Life and Music of Ben Webster - 7In some northern dialects: of milk, to curdle, or to make milk curdle, as part of making cheese.
- 8To make cheese from curdled milk, or (of cheese) to be made in this way.
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Origin
*gʰer-, a Proto-Indo-European root meaning "to yearn for," gave Proto-Germanic *gernaz ("eager, willing"), and adding a suffix that turns adjectives into verbs produced *girnijaną ("to desire, want"). This passed through *girnijan, the Proto-West Germanic form meaning "to be eager for, desire," to Old English ġeornan ("to beg, to desire, yearn") and then to Middle English yernen or yern ("to feel or express desire, to long for, to lust after, to ask for"), the source of the verb. The noun was formed from the verb.