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
  • But from the start, the song harked back to an earlier hit.
    David Browne, Rolling Stone, 16 May 2024
  • The fighting would hark back to the awful trench warfare of the First World War.
    Susan B. Glasser, The New Yorker, 9 Oct. 2023
  • Some of the choral lines have a solemn contrapuntal richness that harks back to the Baroque.
    Alex Ross, The New Yorker, 5 Aug. 2024
  • 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
  • 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
  • His campaign speeches harked back to his first rise to power, in 1994.
    Rachel Donadio, New York Times, 12 June 2023
  • To many in the West, lead poisoning harks back to an earlier era.
    Rachel Silverman Bonnifield, Foreign Affairs, 22 Jan. 2024
  • 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
  • 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
  • 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
  • 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
  • The wirework and defiance of gravity, the whirligig of clashing swords and poles, harks back to the films produced by the Shaw Brothers.
    Vikram Murthi, Vulture, 4 Mar. 2024
  • The collection harked back to a 1970s bohemian archetype.
    Alice Pfeiffer, CNN, 6 Mar. 2024
  • 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
  • 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
  • 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
  • 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
  • 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
  • For years, however, old-timers reunited to hark back on life in the little valley town.
    Mike Klingaman, baltimoresun.com, 25 Oct. 2021
  • 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
  • The restaurant has an intriguing Hollywood theme that harks back to the era of Humphrey Bogart.
    Chelsea Davis, Forbes, 3 May 2023
  • 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
  • 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
  • The medal trays, which hark back to Vuitton’s trunk-making heritage, were crafted by the house’s artisans at one of its leather goods workshops.
    Joelle Diderich, WWD, 2 July 2024
  • Ye says that even with the regional overlap, his flavor profiles hark back to his Zhejiang roots.
    Los Angeles Times, 2 Feb. 2023
  • 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
  • Hanging over their vigil is the question of whether Joan will return after a 20-year absence that harks back to Luther’s visit.
    Charles McNulty, Los Angeles Times, 10 Oct. 2024
  • 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
  • But though people are likely harking back to the pandemic shutdown days, the strike at ports won’t have any impact on the supply of these products.
    Ramishah Maruf, CNN, 3 Oct. 2024

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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