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.

Verb

(label) To perceive sounds through the ear.

(label) To perceive (a sound, or something producing a sound) with the ear, to recognize (something) in an auditory way.

*

, title=(The Celebrity), chapter=4 , passage=Mr. Cooke at once began a tirade against the residents of Asquith for permitting a sandy and generally disgraceful condition of the roads. So roundly did he vituperate the inn management in particular, and with such a loud flow of words, that I trembled lest he should be heard on the veranda.}}

(label) To exercise this faculty intentionally; to listen to.

* 1526 , (William Tyndale), trans. Bible , (w) X:

Agayne there was dissencion amonge the iewes for these sayinges, and many of them sayd: He hath the devyll, and is madde: why heare ye hym?

*{{quote-book, year=1935, author= George Goodchild

, title=Death on the Centre Court, chapter=3 , passage=It had been his intention to go to Wimbledon, but as he himself said: “Why be blooming well frizzled when you can hear all the results over the wireless. And results are all that concern me. […]”}}

(label) To listen favourably to; to grant (a request etc.).

(label) To receive information about; to come to learn of.

* 1667 , (John Milton), (Paradise Lost) :

Adam, soon as he heard / The fatal Trespass don by Eve, amaz'd, / Astonied stood and Blank [...].

(label) To listen to (a person, case) in a court of law; to try.

To sympathize with; to share the feeling or opinion of.