Crossword clues for hankering
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Hanker \Han"ker\ (h[a^][ng]"k[~e]r), v. i. [imp. & p. p. Hankered (-k[~e]rd); p. pr. & vb. n. Hankering.] [Prob. fr. hang; cf. D. hunkeren, hengelen.]
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To long (for) with a keen appetite and uneasiness; to have a vehement desire; -- usually with for or after; as, to hanker after fruit; to hanker after the diversions of the town.
--Addison.He was hankering to join his friend.
--J. A. Symonds. To linger in expectation or with desire.
--Thackeray.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
"mental craving," 1660s, see hanker.
Wiktionary
n. {{context|often|followed by (term for English) or (term after English)|lang=en}} A strong, restless desire, longing, or mental inclination. vb. (present participle of hanker English)
WordNet
n. a yearning for something or to do something [syn: yen]
Usage examples of "hankering".
They had plenty of jerky and smoked fish, but every so often Smoke got a hankering for venison, the tender backstrap fried in a skillet or slow-roasted on a spit above a bed of coals.
I have always had a hankering after superstition, of which I do not boast.
If I had allowed you to go your way to the proverbial dogs, after whose society gilded youths like yourself appear to be always hankering, I should not be sitting here with cold water running down my back and surrounded by Nature in her gloomiest and dampest aspects.
He got in and slid behind the wheel and fingered the gear lever, and tested the clutch and the foot brake--not because he doubted them, but because he had a hankering to feel their smoothness of operation.
A girl who could enkindle Lewis Hewitt to the extent of a black orchid and a dinner on Tuesday, and on Thursday forment the hand-holding hankering in a pure young peony-grower-a girl with a reach like that was something.
So I took to frequenting York Road slaughterhouse early in the morning on the days they were killing kosher cows: not for any residual hankerings after my ethnic origins, but because in non-kosher killing the animal is shot with a bolt through the head, which tends to make a mess of the brain I wanted intact.
Since he was the son of a suicide, it was hardly surprising that his secret hankerings were embarrassing and small.
It was also a good psychological ploy aimed at Endelmyer, who, Tyron knew—having done his homework as any good salesman would have—had hankerings for rubbing shoulders on the Washington circuit.
Truly it was impossible to dissociate her presence from all those wretched hankerings after money and gentility that had disturbed my boyhood – from all those ill-regulated aspirations that had first made me ashamed of home and Joe – from all those visions that had raised her face in the glowing fire, struck it out of the iron on the anvil, extracted it from the darkness of night to look in at the wooden window of the forge and flit away.
As a child my gorge rose at the lugubriousness of Pilgrim, and I had a wicked hankering for Vanity Fair.
As Bond took Vesper's arm and led her over the gilded step, he fought back a hankering to borrow some money from the caisse and plaster maximums over the nearest table.
But I've never made a living with the pasteboards, nor had a hankering to.
She told him that when she and her high-school friends got a hankering for McDonald's, they would drive three hours into Rapid City, South Dakota.
Rich heiresses weren't exactly thick on the ground, and young knights had a certain yuppielike hankering after upward mobility.
He thought of it and alchemised the want into a focus, and when he ploughed forward again he clenched his eyes and teeth and felt the hankering coalesce in two blistering nodes where the horns met his forehead, and he pushed again and felt something catch, a sensual rupture like splitting taut wax paper.