How to Use hark back in a Sentence
hark back
verb-
To hark back to the ’90s, finish the look off with The Row’s little black bag.
—Laura Jackson, Vogue, 23 Aug. 2023
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But from the start, the song harked back to an earlier hit.
—David Browne, Rolling Stone, 16 May 2024
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The fighting would hark back to the awful trench warfare of the First World War.
—Susan B. Glasser, The New Yorker, 9 Oct. 2023
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Russia's enrollment of convicts to the front lines harks back to the Bashi-bazouks of the Ottoman armies.
—Melik Kaylan, Forbes, 11 Dec. 2023
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And that is only one of many ways that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine harks back to the two world wars.
—Margaret MacMillan, Foreign Affairs, 12 June 2023
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His campaign speeches harked back to his first rise to power, in 1994.
—Rachel Donadio, New York Times, 12 June 2023
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To many in the West, lead poisoning harks back to an earlier era.
—Rachel Silverman Bonnifield, Foreign Affairs, 22 Jan. 2024
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That harked back to South Africa’s first all-race democratic election in 1994 after the end of apartheid.
—Keith B. Richburg, Washington Post, 19 June 2024
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The Ukrainian troops are well aware the harsh conditions hark back to battles from a bygone era.
—Nils Adler, Los Angeles Times, 21 Jan. 2022
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The vandalism, church officials said, harked back to threats made against Black churches in the 1800s by groups such as the Ku Klux Klan.
—Keith L. Alexander and Rachel Weiner, Anchorage Daily News, 1 July 2023
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Speaking of which, one of the highlights is a stunning grand entrance hallway that harks back to The OWO’s storied past.
—Abby Montanez, Robb Report, 8 Apr. 2024
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The collection harked back to a 1970s bohemian archetype.
—Alice Pfeiffer, CNN, 6 Mar. 2024
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There’s an à-la-carte menu, and a shop-the-pantry conceit that harks back to the whole dinner-in-a-deli vibe of its Roman progenitor.
—Helen Rosner, The New Yorker, 29 Oct. 2023
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But — having been written, like the rest of these tracks, when the artist was 18 or 19 — the number does hark back to an era when girls (and Fall Out Boys) could just wanna have fun.
—Chris Willman, Variety, 6 July 2023
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Taliban hard-liners are turning back the clock in Afghanistan with a flurry of repressive edicts over the past days that hark back to their harsh rule from the late 1990s.
—Kathy Gannon, chicagotribune.com, 28 Mar. 2022
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Lithographs of pheasants adorning a wall harked back to his youth when his family raised the birds.
—Lila Seidman, Los Angeles Times, 25 Jan. 2024
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The place names that dot Texas’s parched plains hark back to a time more than a century ago when groundwater was plentiful.
—Hiroko Tabuchi, New York Times, 25 Sep. 2023
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For years, however, old-timers reunited to hark back on life in the little valley town.
—Mike Klingaman, baltimoresun.com, 25 Oct. 2021
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This kind of dialogue harks back to the rom-coms in which Ryan starred, often written or directed by the late Nora Ephron.
—Katie Walsh, Los Angeles Times, 3 Nov. 2023
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The restaurant has an intriguing Hollywood theme that harks back to the era of Humphrey Bogart.
—Chelsea Davis, Forbes, 3 May 2023
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Standard tie-dye kits might hark back too much to summer camp and art classes, so how about deep, rich indigo dye?
—Washington Post, 30 Aug. 2020
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The level of risk harks back to two decades ago to the wave of violence known as the second intifada, when 12 medics were killed, according to the Red Crescent.
—Sufian Taha, Washington Post, 19 July 2023
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Ye says that even with the regional overlap, his flavor profiles hark back to his Zhejiang roots.
—Los Angeles Times, 2 Feb. 2023
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Their video clips are more lo-fi, their fashion is rooted in schoolyard streetwear and their music harks back to the R&B and garage sounds that dominated the charts in the early '00s.
—Topher Gauk-Roger, Peoplemag, 20 June 2023
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As for where the balance lies, though, if there is one, Robertson said that not everything in the score needed to hark back to that essential spirit.
—Chris Willman, Variety, 21 Oct. 2023
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Some of the restrictions the militants are imposing — burqas for women, long beards for men, forced attendance at mosques — hark back to their rule of the late 1990s.
—Washington Post, 13 Aug. 2021
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The new Goings On will hark back to those roots, recalibrated for the needs of the digital culture seeker.
—The New Yorker, 31 July 2023
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There is a mix of soft and hard, curvy and linear, that hark back to Barbie’s ’60s and ’70s past, such as a Pink marble coffee table and a walnut Polynet cabinet.
—Jura Koncius, Washington Post, 13 July 2023
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The contest harks back to mining days when prospectors and their burros raced back to the town courthouse to stake a legal claim for gold, silver and other precious metals ahead of their competitors.
—Heather Mundt, Smithsonian Magazine, 13 June 2024
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What is clear, however, is that in harking back to 1917, Putin and his critics and adversaries alike were reaching for the wrong historical analogy.
—Vladislav Zubok, Foreign Affairs, 28 June 2023
Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'hark back.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
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