hanker

present singular third person hankers · participle present hankering · participle past hankered · past hankered

1. To crave, want or desire.

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

   5 more examples

   “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

   “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

   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 […]

   […] 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

   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

   Synonyms: covet