different between yearning vs athirst

English

Pronunciation

• (General American) IPA^(key): /?j?n??/
• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /?j??n??/
• Rhymes: -??(?)n??
• Hyphenation: yearn?ing

Etymology 1

From Middle English yerning, from Old English ?ierning, ?ierninge. Equivalent to the gerund (yearn + -ing). yearn comes from Proto-West Germanic *girnijan, from Proto-Germanic *girnijan?, from *gernaz (“eager, willing”) + *-jan?, from Proto-Indo-European *??er- (“to yearn for”).

Noun

yearning (plural yearnings)

1. A wistful or melancholy longing.

   She had a yearning to see her long-lost sister again.

Related terms

• yearn

Translations

Verb

yearning

1. Present participle and gerund of yearn.

Etymology 2

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 *?óm (“with, by”); second element is from Proto-Germanic *rinnan?, from Proto-Indo-European *h?r?-néw-ti, from *h?er- (“to move”). Doublet of rennet, run.

Noun

yearning (countable and uncountable, plural yearnings)

1. (Scotland, archaic) rennet (an enzyme to curdle milk in order to make cheese).

Related terms

• yearn
• earn
• rennet

Anagrams

• renaying

English

Etymology

Old English ofþyrst, past participle of ofþyrstan (“to smart from thirst”), equivalent to a- (“of”, Etymology 8) +? thirst (verb).

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /?????st/
• Rhymes: -??(?)st

Adjective

athirst (comparative more athirst, superlative most athirst)

1. (archaic) Thirsty.
   • 1851, Herman Melville, Moby-Dick, Chapter 1,^[1]

     Should you ever be athirst in the great American desert, try this experiment, if your caravan happen to be supplied with a metaphysical professor. Yes, as every one knows, meditation and water are wedded for ever.

2. (figuratively) Eager or extremely desirous (for something).
   • 1817, John Keats, “Sonnet (Written on a blank space at the end of Chaucer’s tale of ‘The Floure And The Leafe’”^[2]

     I, that forever feel athirst for glory,

     Could at this moment be content to lie

     Meekly upon the grass, as those whose sobbings

     Were heard of none beside the mournful robins.

   • 1878, Algernon Charles Swinburne, “Ave Atque Vale (In Memory of Charles Baudelaire)” in Poems and Ballads, Second Series, Stanza IV,^[3]

     O sleepless heart and sombre soul unsleeping,

     That were athirst for sleep and no more life

     And no more love, for peace and no more strife!

   • 1913, Rabindranath Tagore, The Gardener, translated from the Bengali by the author, 5,^[4]

     I am restless. I am athirst for far-away things.

     My soul goes out in a longing to touch the skirt of the dim distance.

Anagrams

• ratshit, rattish, tartish, tirthas