yark

• (UK) IPA^(key): /jɑːk/

• Audio (southern England)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɑː(ɹ)k

From Middle English ȝarken, ȝerken, from Old English ġearcian (“to prepare, make ready, procure, furnish, supply”), from Proto-Germanic *garwakōną (“to prepare”), from Proto-Indo-European *gʰrebʰ- (“to grab, take, rake”), equivalent to yare +‎ -k. Related to Old English ġearc (“ready, active, quick”), ġearu (“prepared, ready, equipped, complete, finished, yare”). More at yare.

yark (third-person singular simple present yarks, present participle yarking, simple past and past participle yarked)

1. (transitive, UK dialectal) To make ready; prepare.
   • 1881, Walter Gregor, Notes on the Folk-Lore of the North-East of Scotland:

     [...] Yet thou hast given us leather to yark, and leather to bark, [...]

2. (transitive, obsolete) To dispose; be set in order for; be destined or intended for.
3. (transitive, obsolete) To set open; open.

• yarking

Uncertain, probably originally imitative; compare jerk etc.

• yerk

yark (third-person singular simple present yarks, present participle yarking, simple past and past participle yarked)

1. To draw (stitches etc.) tight.
2. To hit, strike, especially with a cane or whip.
3. To crack (a whip).
   • 1603, Michel de Montaigne, John Florio, transl., The Essayes […], London: […] Val[entine] Simmes for Edward Blount […], →OCLC:

     , Folio Society, 2006, vol.1, p.96:

     he would throw a Dagger, and make a whip to yarke and lash [tr. faisoit craqueter], as cunningly as any Carter in France.

• Kary, Kray, Kyra, aryk, kary-, kray

Perhaps cognate with English ark (“A large box”).

yark

1. barn

• Jacob Poole (1867), William Barnes, editor, A Glossary, With some Pieces of Verse, of the old Dialect of the English Colony in the Baronies of Forth and Bargy, County of Wexford, Ireland, London: J. Russell Smith, page 79