It's the word of the day for December 24th.
Today's word is hark back.
Spelled as two words, H-A-R-K-B-A-C-K.
Hark back is a verb.
Harking back can be about turning back to an earlier topic or circumstance,
as in a storyteller harking back to his youth.
or it can be about going back to something as an origin or source,
as in a style that harks back to the turn of the previous century.
Here's the word used in a sentence from the Smithsonian magazine.
The single harks back to Cheney's heyday when his music was produced on 45s and put into jukeboxes,
says Maureen Lauffren.
The word hark, a very old one, meaning to listen, was used as a cry in hunting.
The master of the hunt might cry hark forward or hark back.
The cries became set phrases, both as nouns and verbs.
Thus a hark back was a retracing of a root by dogs and hunters,
and to hark back was to turn back along the path.
From its use in hunting, the verb acquired its current figurative meanings,
concerned with returning to the past.
The variant harken Also,
a very old word meaning to listen is also used with and without the word back as synonyms of hark back.