yearning
year·ning
noun
prolonged unfulfilled desire or need
adjective
Origin
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.
Related words
Broader terms
Narrower terms
WordNet 2.1 (Princeton University). Wiktionary (CC BY-SA). CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. WordNet 2.1 Copyright Princeton University. All rights reserved. Wiktionary content is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike Licence.