stark
adjectiveadverbverbcommon in dialogue
- United Kingdom//stɑːk//
- United States//stɑɹk//
Severe; violent; fierce (now usually in describing the weather).
adjective
- 1
obsoleteHard, firm; obdurate.
- 2
Severe; violent; fierce (now usually in describing the weather).
Of all the transitions brought about on the Earth’s surface by temperature change, the melting of ice into water is the starkest. It is binary. And for the land beneath, the air above and the life around, it changes everything.
- 3
archaicStrong; vigorous; powerful.
Stark beer, boy, stout and strong beer.
a stark, moss-trooping Scot
- 4
Stiff, rigid.
His heauie head, deuoide of carefull carke, / Whose sences all were straight benumbd and starke.
Many a nobleman lies stark and stiff / Under the hoofs of vaunting enemies.
The north is not so stark and cold.
- 5
Plain in appearance; barren, desolate.
I picked my way forlornly through the stark, sharp rocks.
First, the stark message to “eat less” of a particular food has been deep-sixed; don’t look for it ever again in any official U.S. dietary pronouncement.
- 6
Naked.
They bore me to a cavern in the hill Beneath that column, and unbound me there; And one did strip me stark; and one did fill A vessel from the putrid pool; one bare A lighted torch, and four with friendless care Guided my steps the cavern-paths along […]
- 7
Complete, absolute, full.
I screamed in stark terror.
A flower was growing, in stark contrast, out of the sidewalk.
Consider, first, the stark security / The commonwealth is in now.
1689 (first published posthumously), John Selden, Table-Talk Rhetoric is very good or stark naught; there's no medium in rhetoric.
Etymology
From Middle English stark, starc, from Old English stearc, starc (“stiff, rigid, unyielding, obstinate, hard, strong, severe, violent”), from Proto-West Germanic *stark, from Proto-Germanic *starkuz (“stiff, strong”), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)terg- (“rigid, stiff”). Cognate with Saterland Frisian sterc (“strong”), Dutch sterk (“strong”), Low German sterk (“strong”), German stark (“strong”), Danish stærk (“strong”), Swedish stark (“strong”), Norwegian sterk (“strong”), Icelandic sterkur (“strong”). Related to starch. In the phrase stark naked: an alternation of Middle English stert naked, from stert (“tail”), a literal parallel to the modern butt naked.
adverb
- 1
Starkly; entirely, absolutely.
He's gone stark, staring mad.
She was just standing there, stark naked.
[…] held him strangled in his arms till he was stark dead.
“… That woman is stark mad, Lord Stranleigh. Her own father recognised it when he bereft her of all power in the great business he founded. …”
verb
- 1
obsoleteTo stiffen.
Etymology
From Middle English starken, from Old English stearcian (“to stiffen, become hard, grow stiff or hard”), from Proto-Germanic *starkōną, *starkēną (“to stiffen, become hard”), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)terg- (“rigid, stiff”). Cognate with German erstarken (“to strengthen”).
Forms
- comparative
- starker
- superlative
- starkest
- past tense
- starked
- past participle
- starked
- present participle
- starking
- third person singular
- starks
stark · Severe; violent; fierce (now usually in describing the weather).
Stark · A surname.starlight · Light emitted from stars.starling · A family, Sturnidae, of passerine birds.