cark

present singular third person carks · participle present carking · participle past carked · past carked

1. intransitiveobsoleteTo 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

2. intransitiveobsoletetransitiveTo bring worry, vexation, or anxiety.

   [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

   2 more examples

   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

   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

3. archaicintransitiveTo labor anxiously.

   Why for sluggards cark and moil?

   1849, Charles Kingsley, Alton Locke's Song

plural carks

1. countableobsoleteuncountableA noxious or corroding worry.

   Fling cark and care aside.

   1832, William Motherwell, They Come! The Merry Summer Months

   2 more examples

   His heauie head, deuoide of carefull carke, / Whose sences all were straight benumbd and starke.

   1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book I, Canto I”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC, stanza 44

   To all who love repose and shelter, Freedom from the cares of money and the cark of fashion, and (in lieu of these) refreshing air, bright water, and green country, there is scarcely any valley left to compare with that of Springhaven.

   1886 April – 1887 April, Richard Doddridge Blackmore, “When the Ship Comes Home”, in Springhaven. A Tale of the Great War. […], volume I, London: Sampson Low, Marston, Searle & Rivington, […], published 1887, →OCLC, pages 1–2

2. countableobsoleteuncountableThe state of being filled with worry.

present singular third person carks · participle present carking · participle past carked · past carked

1. pronunciation spellingPronunciation spelling of caulk.

1. A village in Lower Holker parish, South Lakeland district, Cumbria, England (OS grid ref SD3676).