intransitive verb
1. of a hunting dog : to retrace a course until a scent is regained
2.
a. : to turn back to an earlier topic or circumstance
hark back … to a passage already quoted — Susanne K. Langer
don't hark back to the old days unless you can be amusing about them — Agnes Rogers
b. : to go back to something as an origin or source
archaisms that hark back to the early days of colonialism — C.J.Crowley
this proposition harks back to Locke and Smith — Quarterly Journal of Economics