STARK • DICCIONARIO INGLES.COM • Definition of Stark

Add this Dictionary
to your website!
See more options...

/stɑrk/ Listen

adjective

Stark adj. (compar. starker; superl. starkest)

Stiff; rigid. "Whose senses all were straight benumbed and stark." "His heart gan wax as stark as marble stone." "Many a nobleman lies stark and stiff Under the hoofs of vaunting enemies." "The north is not so stark and cold."

Complete; absolute; full; perfect; entire. (Obs.) "Consider the stark security The common wealth is in now."

Strong; vigorous; powerful. "A stark, moss-trooping Scot." "Stark beer, boy, stout and strong beer."

Severe; violent; fierce. (Obs.) "In starke stours" (i. e., in fierce combats).

Mere; sheer; gross; entire; downright. "He pronounces the citation stark nonsense." "Rhetoric is very good or stark naught; there's no medium in rhetoric."

adverb

Stark adv. Wholly; entirely; absolutely; quite; as, stark mad. "Held him strangled in his arms till he was stark dead."

Stark naked, wholly naked; quite bare. "Strip your sword stark naked." Note: According to Professor Skeat, "stark-naked" is derived from steort-naked, or start-naked, literally tail-naked, and hence wholly naked. If this etymology be true the preferable form is stark-naked.

verb

Stark v. t. To stiffen. (R.) "If horror have not starked your limbs."

See images of 'Stark'

Etymology of 'Stark'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

Share |

"Stark" Quotes from Famous Books

... the name of God, Amen," as he strews the first handful of mould on the dead—it may be on friends as well as on foes. If the pastor can reach the brink of the pit, it is his to say the few words that mark the recognition of the fact that those lying stark and grim below him are not as the beasts that perish. The Germans have no set funeral service, and if they had, there would be no time for it here. "Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, in sure and certain hope of the resurrection ...

— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes

... Phyllis's young man's bosses. If he makes as good a thing of it as they have done, she will be no end of a swell. Mr. Travis Underwood has brought down his hunters and gives me a mount. Claude would go stark staring mad to see ...

— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge

... wayfarer. When they reached the prison, Condorcet, starving, bleeding, way-worn, was flung into his cell. On the morrow, when the gaolers came to seek him, they found him stretched upon the ground, dead and stark. So he perished—of hunger and weariness, say some; of poison ever carried by him in a ring, say others.[39] So, to the last revolving supreme cares, this high spirit was overtaken by annihilation. His memory is left to us, the ...

— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 3: Condorcet • John Morley

... lip to young lip does another meet you? Has a lonely traveller, when day was stark and long, Toiling ever slower to the grey road's ending, Reached a sudden summer of sun and flower and song? Has he seen in you the world's one yearning, All the season's message, all the heaven's play? Has he read in you the riddle of our living? Have you to another been ...

— Nights in London • Thomas Burke

... scent of honeysuckle take Joan back to the sun-bathed cottage and the voice behind the door. No longer did she feel that all this wasn't really happening, that it was fantastic. Stark reality forced itself upon her and brought her into the present as though some one had turned up all the lights in a dark room. She was alone with the man whom she had driven to the limit of his patience. No one knew that she was there. It was a trick ...

— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton

More quotes...