How is the word yearn distinct from other similar verbs?
Some common synonyms of yearn are hanker, hunger, long, pine, and thirst. While all these words mean "to have a strong desire for something," yearn suggests an eager, restless, or painful longing.
yearned for a stage career
Where would hanker be a reasonable alternative to yearn?
The synonyms hanker and yearn are sometimes interchangeable, but hanker suggests the uneasy promptings of unsatisfied appetite or desire.
always hankering for money
How are the words hunger and thirst related as synonyms of yearn?
Both hunger and thirst imply an insistent or impatient craving or a compelling need.
hungered for a business of his own
thirsted for power
When could long be used to replace yearn?
Although the words long and yearn have much in common, long implies a wishing with one's whole heart and often a striving to attain.
longed for some rest
When might pine be a better fit than yearn?
The words pine and yearn can be used in similar contexts, but pine implies a languishing or a fruitless longing for what is impossible.
pined for a lost love
Example Sentences
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Recent Examples of yearnBeyond political motives, the group yearn for human warmth and connection.—Annika Pham, Variety, 11 Oct. 2025 And as a chocolate lover, my taste buds yearn for an authentic Swiss chocolate tasting at the world-famous Lindt Home of Chocolate in Zurich.—Essence, 6 Oct. 2025 Most major celebrities or pop artists will tell you their lives are spent in a glass cage, and yearn for mundanity as much as some pine for fame.—Jaeden Pinder, Pitchfork, 3 Oct. 2025 Tom’s doomed desire for Vivien—and for her vanished twenty-first-century world—shows how people in the future may yearn for the past, though the past itself proves neglectful and careless of the future.—Katy Waldman, New Yorker, 22 Sep. 2025 See All Example Sentences for yearn
Set in the coziest of places — a historic, allegedly haunted New England inn — the film follows a pair of employees/ghost hunters, Claire (Sara Paxton) and Luke (Pat Healy), who long for a real-life supernatural encounter during the hotel's last weekend of operations.
—
Randall Colburn,
Entertainment Weekly,
18 Oct. 2025
Richardson argues that, even as an adult, Matthiessen longed to find some similar paradise.
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