stark
Language: English
Part of speech: adj
Pronunciation: enpr: stärk
ipa: /stɑɹk/
enpr: stärk
ipa: /stɑːk/
rhymes: -ɑː(ɹ)k
homophone: stock (non-rhotic, father-bother merger)
Forms: form: starker
form: starkest
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.
Senses: glosses: Hard, firm; obdurate.
examples: text: 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.
ref: 2013 May 11, “The climate of Tibet: Pole-land”, in The Economist, volume 407, number 8835, page 80:
glosses: Severe; violent; fierce (now usually in describing the weather).
examples: text: Stark beer, boy, stout and strong beer.
ref: c. 1622, John Fletcher, Philip Massinger [et al.?], “Beggars Bush”, in Comedies and Tragedies […], London: […] Humphrey Robinson, […], and for Humphrey Moseley […], published 1647, →OCLC, Act III, scene ii:
text: a stark, moss-trooping Scot
ref: 1805, Walter Scott, “(please specify the page)”, in The Lay of the Last Minstrel: A Poem, London: […] [James Ballantyne] for Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, […], and A[rchibald] Constable and Co., […], →OCLC:
glosses: Strong; vigorous; powerful.
examples: text: His heauie head, deuoide of carefull carke, / Whose sences all were straight benumbd and starke.
ref: 1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book I, Canto I”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC, stanza 44:
text: Many a nobleman lies stark and stiff / Under the hoofs of vaunting enemies.
ref: c. 1597 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The First Part of Henry the Fourth, […]”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act V, scene iii]:
text: The north is not so stark and cold.
ref: 1611, Ben[jamin] Jonson, Catiline His Conspiracy, London: […] [William Stansby?] for Walter Burre, →OCLC, (please specify the page):
glosses: Stiff, rigid.
examples: text: I picked my way forlornly through the stark, sharp rocks.
text: 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 going blank behind the blue-black of the uniform), and the picker goes off in the starkest of transportations: you keep an ear cocked ever after for the return of his van and its paraphernalian clatter in the gravelled driveway.
ref: 2004, Gary Lutz, “Uncle”, in Peter Conners, editor, PP/FF: An Anthology, Buffalo, N.Y.: Starcherone Books, published 2006, →ISBN, page 179:
text: 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.
ref: 2007 January 28, Michael Pollan, “Unhappy Meals”, in The New York Times, →ISSN:
text: The modern, glass-fronted buildings surrounding the massive skyscraper Taipei 101 in the Xinyi District suggest a shift toward cleaner, starker development, but a trip to older parts of the city reveals hidden corners untouched by modernity.
The oldest section, Wanhua, with its winding corridors and quiet decay, offers a glimpse of the city’s bygone days. At its bustling heart is the busy Longshan Temple. I bump past a flurry of tourists, worshipers and monks selling prayer beads outside the gates to reach the controlled chaos within, where hundreds of faithful light incense and present offerings at myriad shrines to Buddha and other deities.
ref: 2011 April 8, Erin Meister, “Reveling in the real Taiwain^([sic – meaning Taiwan])”, in The Washington Post, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 26 Apr 2023, Travel:
glosses: Plain in appearance; barren, desolate.
examples: text: 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 […]
ref: 1817 December, Percy Bysshe Shelley, “The Revolt of Islam. […]”, in [Mary] Shelley, editor, The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley. […], volume I, London: Edward Moxon […], published 1839, →OCLC, page 211:
glosses: Naked.
examples: text: I screamed in stark terror.
text: A flower was growing, in stark contrast, out of the sidewalk.
text: Consider, first, the stark security / The commonwealth is in now.
ref: 1611, Ben[jamin] Jonson, Catiline His Conspiracy, London: […] [William Stansby?] for Walter Burre, →OCLC, (please specify the page):
text: 1689 (first published posthumously), John Selden, Table-Talk
Rhetoric is very good or stark naught; there's no medium in rhetoric.
text: Ramadans, and prolonged ham-squattings in cold, cheerless rooms were stark nonsense
ref: 1851 November 14, Herman Melville, chapter 17, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, →OCLC:
glosses: Complete, absolute, full.
Derived terms: starken
starkly
starkness