/stɑɹk/, /stɑːk/
OriginFrom 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.
- obsoleteHard, firm; obdurate.
- 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 aro”
- archaic, literary, poeticStrong; vigorous; powerful.
“Stark beer, boy, stout and strong beer.”
“a stark, moss-trooping Scot”
- 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.”
- Plain in appearance; barren, desolate.
“I picked my way forlornly through the stark, sharp rocks.”
“I would have to remind her, counteringly, that you don’t pick the person who fronts your life—you get picked, you watch the picker’s ankles vanish into the scrunched socks afterward (his whole body go”
“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.”
- 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 frie”
- 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.”
- not-comparableStarkly; 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.”
- dialectal, obsoleteTo stiffen.
- countable, uncountableA surname.
- countable, uncountableAn unincorporated community in Butts County, Georgia.
- countable, uncountableAn unincorporated community in Stark County, Illinois.
- countable, uncountableA tiny city in Neosho County, Kansas.
- countable, uncountableAn unincorporated community in Elliott County, Kentucky.
- countable, uncountableAn unincorporated community in Pike County, Missouri.
- countable, uncountableA small town in Coos County, New Hampshire.
- countable, uncountableA small town in Herkimer County, New York, named after John Stark.
- countable, uncountableAn unincorporated community in Boone County, West Virginia.
- countable, uncountableA small town in Vernon County, Wisconsin.
- uncountableThe language spoken in the Ender's Game series, which is nearly identical to American English.
Formsstarker(comparative) · starkest(superlative) · starks(present, singular, third-person) · starking(participle, present) · starked(participle, past) · starked(past) · Starks(plural)