Verb

(en verb)

To become hard or form a crust, like bark.

*{{quote-book, year=1828, author=David Macbeth Moir, title=The Life of Mansie Wauch, chapter=, edition= citation

, passage=The poor patient knew at once his master's tongue, and lifting up one of his eyes, the other being stiff and barkened down said in a melancholy voice, "Ah, master, do you think I'll get better?" }}

*1908 , Sir Walter Scott, Guy Mannering, or, The astrologer :

"The best way's to let the blood barken upon the cut — that saves plasters, hinney."

To tan or dye with bark.

*{{quote-book, year=1818, author=Sir Walter Scott, title=The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Vol. 1., Illustrated, chapter=, edition= citation

, passage="And it wad far better become ye, Mr. Saddletree," continued his helpmate, "since ye say ye hae skeel o' the law, to try if ye can do onything for Effie Deans, puir thing, that's lying up in the tolbooth yonder, cauld, and hungry, and comfortless--A servant lass of ours, Mr. Butler, and as innocent a lass, to my thinking, and as usefu' in the shop--When Mr. Saddletree gangs out,--and ye're aware he's seldom at hame when there's ony o' the plea-houses open,--poor Effie used to help me to tumble the bundles o' barkened leather up and down, and range out the gudes, and suit a' body's humours--And troth, she could aye please the customers wi' her answers, for she was aye civil, and a bonnier lass wasna in Auld Reekie. }} (Webster 1913) ----

Verb

(en verb)

‘to listen, hear, regard’, more common form in the US.

* 1833 :

Œnone Dear mother Ida, harken ere I die.

* 1883:

We were not many minutes on the road, though we sometimes stopped to lay hold of each other and harken . But there was no unusual sound...

* 1942 ,

... whom he had revered and harkened to and loved and lost and grieved:

(figuratively, US) To hark back, to return or revert (to a subject etc.), to allude to, to evoke, to long or pine for (a past event or era).

* 1994 , David Coogan, Electronic Writing Centers: Computing the Field of Composition , page 4

The emerging consensus that writing was merely transcribed speech, then, harkened back to the pre-disciplinary, liberal arts college

* 2005 , Carol Padden, Tom L. Humphries, Inside Deaf Culture , page 48

Bell argued that the manual approach was "backwards," and harkened to a primitive age where humans used gesture and pantomime.