English

Verb

cark ‎(third-person singular simple present carks, present participle carking, simple past and past participle carked)

1. (obsolete, intransitive) To be filled with worry, solicitude, or troubles.
2. (obsolete, transitive) To bring worry, vexation, or anxiety.
   • 1831, Adam Clarke, VI p.600:

     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.

   • 1915, Mrs. Belloc Lowndes, The Lodger, chapter I:

     Thanks to that penny he had just spent so recklessly [on a newspaper] he would pass a happy hour, taken, for once, out of his anxious, despondent, miserable self. It irritated him shrewdly to know that these moments of respite from carking care would not be shared with his poor wife, with careworn, troubled Ellen.

Noun

cark ‎(plural carks)

1. (obsolete) A noxious or corroding worry.
   • Spenser

     His heavy head, devoid of careful cark.

   • Motherwell

     Fling cark and care aside.

   • R. D. Blackmore

     Freedom from the cares of money and the cark of fashion.

2. (obsolete) The state of being filled with worry.

Etymology 2

From caulk.

Verb

cark ‎(third-person singular simple present carks, present participle carking, simple past and past participle carked)

1. Eye dialect spelling of caulk.

Etymology 3

Verb

cark

1. See cark it.

References

• cark in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913

Anagrams

• rack

Scots

Pronunciation

• (Southern Scots) IPA^(key): /ˈkɑrk/

Noun

cark ‎(plural carks)

1. (archaic) Worry, anxiety.

Verb

cark ‎(third-person singular present carks, present participle carkin, past carkt, past participle carkt)

1. (archaic) To worry or be anxious.