cark
/kɑː(ɹ)k/
cark verb: to be filled with worry, solicitude, or troubles. Also the pronunciation spelling of caulk.
Verb
cark (third-person singular simple present carks, present participle carking, simple past and past participle carked)
- To be filled with worry, solicitude, or troubles.
- [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?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...
- To bring worry, vexation, or anxiety.
- 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.1831, Adam Clarke, Commentary on the Bible, Comment on 2 Timothy 2: 22
- [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.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
- To labor anxiously.
- Why for sluggards cark and moil?1849, Charles Kingsley, Alton Locke's Song
Noun
cark (countable and uncountable, plural carks)
- A noxious or corroding worry.
- His heauie head, deuoide of carefull carke, / Whose sences all were straight benumbd and starke.1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book I, Canto I”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC, stanza 44
- Fling cark and care aside.1832, William Motherwell, They Come! The Merry Summer Months
- The state of being filled with worry.
Proper noun capitalized: Cark
Cark
- A village in Lower Holker parish, South Lakeland district, Cumbria, England (OS grid ref SD3676).
Also used as
cark is also the pronunciation spelling of caulk.
Forms of cark
| Verb | |
|---|---|
| third-person singular present | carks |
| present participle | carking |
| past participle | carked |
| past | carked |
| Noun | |
| plural | carks |
Origin of cark
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.
From Middle English cark, kark (“worry”), from Old English carc (“sorrow, worry”).
From caulk.
Words formed from cark
Words that rhyme with cark
28 more rhymesFewer rhymes
Questions about cark
- What does cark mean?
- Cark means to be filled with worry, solicitude, or troubles.
- What part of speech is cark?
- Cark can be a verb, a noun or a proper noun.
- How do you pronounce cark?
- Cark is pronounced /kɑː(ɹ)k/.
- What is the past tense of cark?
- The past tense of cark is carked.
Words near cark in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: cark (page history and authors); Cark (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-cark.wav.
Cite this entry: “cark.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/cark. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.