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yearn ~ yarn

[slightly different pronunciation: ‘yearn’ rhymes with “turn”, and ‘yarn’ rhymes with “barn”]

“Yearn” (verb) is ‘to have a strong liking, desire for something, usually that something is very difficult to get; to feel deep pity, sympathy, tenderness, affection  for somebody’,

e.g.

Though my grandparents live with us in the city, they always yearn for the life in the country.

The doctors said she could not have children, but she yearned for a child of her own whenever she saw other women with their babies.

People yearn over the fate of the people in Darfur in Sudan, but are helpless.

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“Yarn”, as a noun, is ‘thick long thread made of material such as cotton, wool, silk, nylon, flax, etc. which is used to weave or knit (make cloth) things; a long fanciful story of travels, adventure, usually made interesting and exciting by adding incidents that never really happened, and sometime very hard to believe’; and as a verb, it is ‘to tell an adventurous, exciting or hard-to-believe story’,

e.g.

The young mother bought some blue dyed yarn and started to knit a sweater for her baby.

The more qualitative the yarn, the longer the cloth lasts.

He used to spin his grandchildren yarns about his life in the Army, which are more exciting than the stories of ‘The Arabian Nights’.     [i.e. he used to tell stories that are very exciting but hard to believe about how he had fought the enemy when he was a soldier in the Army]

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