STARK • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Stark

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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."

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Etymology of 'Stark'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Stark" Quotes from Famous Books

... cautiously. The room was uninhabited; stark bare of furniture, save for the quadrant key left to hang from the midmost beam; the "hellen "-slated floor clean as a ...

— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)

... his hand cordially and turned to depart. Vincenzo was in waiting with the carriage. Once I looked back, as with slow steps I left the field; a golden radiance illumined the sky just above the stark figure stretched so straightly on the sward; while almost from the very side of that pulseless heart a little bird rose from its nest among the grasses and soared into the heavens, singing rapturously as it flew into the ...

— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli

... Pandora in fayre Cynthia's steede, And make the moone inconstant like thyselfe, Raigne thou at women's nuptials, and their birth, Let them be mutable in all their loves. Fantasticall, childish, and folish, in their desires Demanding toyes; and stark madde When they ...

— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley

... gentleman, a man of very good position, was found dead, stark dead, in the area of a certain house in Paul Street, off Tottenham Court Road. Of course the police did not make the discovery; if you happen to be sitting up all night and have a light in your window, the constable will ring the ...

— The Great God Pan • Arthur Machen

... smothered cries for help. Smoke that filled his throat, eyes, brain, soul. Terrible, enfolding, imprisoning smoke; thick, yellow, gray, menacing! Smoke that shut his soul away from all the universe, as if he had been suddenly blotted out, and made him feel how stark alone he had been born, and always would ...

— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz

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