hark back

present singular third person harks back · participle present harking back · participle past harked back · past harked back

1. intransitivehobbiesOf hounds: to retrace a course in order to pick up the lost scent of prey.
2. broadlyintransitiveTo return to where one has previously been; to retrace one's steps.

   He must have overshot the mark, and must hark back. So he turned his weary horse's head, and made his way back along the road to the spot where his spoor struck into it.

   1885, H[enry] Rider Haggard, “Hans’ City of Rest”, in The Witch’s Head […], volume III, London: Hurst and Blackett, […], →OCLC, page 18

   Synonyms: go back

3. figurativelyintransitiveTo allude, return, or revert (to a subject previously mentioned, etc.); also, to evoke, or long or pine for (a past era or event).First known use 19th c.

   Harking back to the theme of a series of speeches he [George W. Bush] delivered last week, he said he was reminded that "there's still an enemy out there that would like to inflict the same kind of damage again."

   2006 September 11, Sheryl Gay Stolberg, “Bush Mourns 9/11 at Ground Zero as N.Y. Remembers”, in The New York Times, New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 22 Dec 2020

   1 more example

   Mr. Flemyng, who had been assuaging his thirst with more champagne during the afternoon, had harked back to the subject of his morning's discourse, and was laying down an authoritative scheme of ethics, in the course of which sundry hard words, such as transcendentalism, pseudo-materialism and the like, lost a syllable here and there.

   1881, W[illiam] E[dward] Norris, “A Racecourse and a Cathedral”, in Matrimony. […], volume II, London: Smith, Elder & Co., […], →OCLC, pages 76–77

   Synonyms: harken back, hearken back, call back

4. transitivehobbiesTo call back (hounds); to recall.

plural hark backs · alternative hark-back

1. Alternative form of hark-back.
   1. hobbiesAn act of hounds retracing a course in order to pick up the lost scent of prey.
   2. figurativelyAn act of alluding, returning, or reverting (to a subject previously mentioned, etc.); also, an act of evoking, or longing or pining for (a past era or event).