0 to wish very strongly, especially for something that you cannot have or something that is very difficult to have:
Despite his great commercial success he still yearns for critical approval.
[ + to infinitive ] Sometimes I just yearn to be alone.
1 to desire something strongly, esp. something difficult or impossible to obtain:
[ + to infinitive ] Joy yearns to earn enough money from her job as a doctor’s assistant for her to become independent.
It can also inform larger questions about what it is we yearn for when we imagine effective public language and viable political identity.
If we yearn to retain those approaches, his attempt is probably as good as we can get.
The speaker does not yearn for heavenly light, but a humble "beacon" of human manufacture.
In the absence of visible and certain revelation, the texts substituted narrative, with its yearning appeal for an enabling hermeneutic reciprocity.
Europeans do not embrace extremely anti-immigrant views, but neither are they yearning to welcome the world's huddled masses.
They yearn to manufacture human-alien hybrids, ethical androids and genetically programmed clones.
The end results were very satisfying but must have left them yearning for a more rapid method for resolving rock fabrics.
The yearning for performance is displaced entirely into narratives recounting that yearning.
