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yearning

year·ning

UK/ˈjɜːnɪŋ/ US/ˈjɝnɪŋ/ fairly common

noun

adjective

1.

full of longing or unfulfilled desire

  • “those wistful little ads that the lovelorn place in the classifieds”
Synonyms
Similar

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.

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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.