Word.ws English Dictionary

yearning

Syllables: yearn·ingUK/ˈjɜːnɪŋ//ˈjɝnɪŋ/

yearning noun: a wistful or melancholy longing. Also the present participle and gerund of yearn.

yearning: man wearing gray and black crew-neck shirt standing and looking out window
Photo by Hamish Duncan on Unsplash

Noun (1)

yearning (plural yearnings)

  1. A wistful or melancholy longing.
    • She had a yearning to see her long-lost sister again.

Noun (2)

yearning (countable and uncountable, plural yearnings)

  1. (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.1808, Elizabeth Hamilton, Cottagers of Glenburnie

Also used as

yearning is also the present participle and gerund of yearn.

yearning meaning in Tamil, Sanskrit and Arabic

yearning in Tamil

ஏங்குகிறது

yearning in Sanskrit

wistful or melancholy longing
छन्दस् chandas

yearning in Arabic

wistful or melancholy longing
شَوْق šawq

Examples of yearning in a sentence

  • If he taught a class in yearning, I would take it.
  • The Hollywood elitists had nominated two fraudumentaries on fake hospitals, yearning to breathe free.
  • He preserves a deep yearning to see sinners get their come-uppance here on earth.

All 33 example sentences with yearning

Forms of yearning

pluralyearnings

Plural of yearning: yearnings

Origin of yearning

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.

PIE word *ḱóm 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.

Words that rhyme with yearning

Questions about yearning

What does yearning mean?
Yearning means a wistful or melancholy longing.
What is yearning in Tamil?
Yearning in Tamil is ஏங்குகிறது. See Yearning meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is yearning?
Yearning is a noun.
How do you pronounce yearning?
Yearning is pronounced /ˈjɝnɪŋ/ (US).
What is the plural of yearning?
The plural of yearning is yearnings.

Words near yearning in the dictionary

  1. yearnest
  2. yearneth
  3. yearnful
  4. yearnfully
  5. yearnfulness
  6. yearning
  7. yearningly
  8. yearningness
  9. yearnings
  10. yearns
  11. yearnsome

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: yearning (page history and authors); yearning (Tamil, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). 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: en-us-yearning.ogg.

Cite this entry: “yearning.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/yearning. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.