cark

See also: Cark and çark

English

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /kɑː(ɹ)k/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɑː(ɹ)k

Etymology 1

From Middle English carken (“to be anxious, worry”, intransitive), from Old English *carcian ("to be sorrowful, worry"; found in becarcian (“to worry about, care for”)), a frequentative form of Old English carian (“to care”), equivalent to care +‎ -k.

The Middle English carken, also charken (“to load (sth.); to bear (crops); to burden, harass”, transitive), from Old Northern French carquier (“to load, burden”), from Latin carricāre (“to load”), related to Old French chargier (“to load”), is a different word often confused with the above.

Verb

cark (third-person singular simple present carks, present participle carking, simple past and past participle carked)

1. (obsolete, intransitive) To be filled with worry, solicitude, or troubles.
   • 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:

     [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?

2. (obsolete, transitive, intransitive) To bring worry, vexation, or anxiety.
   • 1831, Adam Clarke, Commentary on the Bible, Comment on 2 Timothy 2: 22:

     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.

   • 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:

     [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.

   • 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:

     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.

3. (archaic, intransitive) To labor anxiously.
   • 1849, Charles Kingsley, Alton Locke's Song:

     Why for sluggards cark and moil?

Derived terms

• overcark

Etymology 2

From Middle English cark, kark (“worry”), from Old English carc (“sorrow, worry”).

Noun

cark (countable and uncountable, plural carks)

1. (obsolete) A noxious or corroding worry.
   • 1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book I, Canto I”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC, stanza 44:

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

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

     Fling cark and care aside.

   • 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:

     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.

2. (obsolete) The state of being filled with worry.

Descendants

• → Welsh: carc

Etymology 3

From caulk.

Verb

cark (third-person singular simple present carks, present participle carking, simple past and past participle carked)

1. Pronunciation spelling of caulk.

See also

• cark it

References

• “cark”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.
• “cark”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.

Anagrams

• RACK, rack