Primary
''yearning'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260331180822-00-⌔
yearning - Wiktionary, the free dictionary
English
Noun
yearning (plural yearnings)
- A wistful or melancholy longing.
- ✤ She had a yearning to see her long-lost sister again.
Verb
yearning
- present participle and gerund of yearn
- ✤ I’ve got this burning, yearning, yearning/Feeling inside me/Ooh, deep inside me/And it hurts so bad1
Noun
yearning (countable and uncountable, plural yearnings)
- (Scotland, archaic) Rennet (an enzyme to curdle milk in order to make cheese).
- ✤ Mrs. MacClarty then took down a bottle of rennet, or yearning, as she called it.2
Pronunciation
- (General American) IPA: /ˈjɝnɪŋ/
- (Received Pronunciation) IPA: /ˈjɜːnɪŋ/
- Audio (US): 🔊
- Rhymes: -ɜː(ɹ)nɪŋ
- Hyphenation: yearn‧ing
Etymology 1
From Middle English yerning, from Old English ġierning, ġierninge. Equivalent to the gerund (yearn + -ing). yearn comes from Proto-West Germanic ﹡girnijan, from Proto-Germanic ﹡girnijaną, from ﹡gernaz (“eager, willing”) + ﹡-janą, from Proto-Indo-European ﹡gʰer- (“to yearn for”). By surface analysis, yearn + -ing.
Etymology 2
From earlier yerning, from Middle English yernyng, erning, renning. From Old English rynning and gerunnen, geurnen (“run together, coagulated, curdled”), past participles of gerinnan, geirnan, respectively. Influenced by Middle English yern (“to (cause to) coagulate or curdle”), Old English iernan (“to run, flow”), metathesized forms derived from the same origin. From verbal prefix ge- + rinnan (“to run”). First element is from Proto-West Germanic ﹡ga-, from Proto-Germanic ﹡ga-, from Proto-Indo-European ﹡ḱóm (“with, by”); second element is from Proto-Germanic ﹡rinnaną, from Proto-Indo-European ﹡h₃r̥-néw-ti, from ﹡h₃er- (“to move”). Doublet of rennet, run.
Printed 2026-06-28.
(echo:: @ ⌗)
Link to original Footnotes
Secondary
• • •