These words refer to a strong inclination towards something or an unfulfilled want that one may or may not take action to fill. Yearn points to an inclination that is continually present as a gnawing or unhappy feeling of lacking something, either a clearly defined object or something more abstract, less definite or beyond one’s reach: yearning for one look from her; yearning to have a girl friend of his own. The word must be used with case, since it can give a tone of sentimental overstatement: yearning for self-fulfillment, she knew not how. This tone can be deflated in brusque usage: yearning for a cold glass of beer. The likelihood of such a sentimental tone is even more heavily incurred by pine , which would now be thought old-fashioned in most situation. It can give an implication of long-term yearning so intense as to result in a wasting away of physical or mental health, as in folk ballads: missing her dead lover so much that she pined away and died. Moon informally satirizes such excessive grieving or yearning ; all this adolescent mooning after a girl who is nothing but a flirt; teenage girls mooning over the latest pop-cult heroes.

Long is less open than pine or yearn to the charge of sounding high-toned, though such a tone is possible: man’s age-old longing for freedom. More often, the word points to a weaker, more enduring or more hopeless want, if not to one totally impossible or contrary to fact: longing to be as attractive as the most popular girl in her class. It can apply informally to less extreme situations, pointing to any sort of emotional want: telling him how much she longed simply to do nothing for a solid wee. Hanker specifically suggests desire of a trivial, momentary or frivolous nature: hankering after the woman at the bar who kept looking at him in the mirror. The word can suggest also any mild desire, impulse or inclination: hankering to see a good film.