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Stark   /stɑrk/   Listen
adjective
Stark  adj.  (compar. starker; superl. starkest)  
1.
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."
2.
Complete; absolute; full; perfect; entire. (Obs.) "Consider the stark security The common wealth is in now."
3.
Strong; vigorous; powerful. "A stark, moss-trooping Scot." "Stark beer, boy, stout and strong beer."
4.
Severe; violent; fierce. (Obs.) "In starke stours" (i. e., in fierce combats).
5.
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."





Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48


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"Stark" Quotes from Famous Books



... gleam of treacherous sunshine, followed by more and heavier dashes. The wind was in the southwest, and to rain seemed the easiest thing in the world. From fitful dashes to a steady pour the transition was natural. We stood huddled together, stark and grim, under our cover, like hens under a cart. The fire fought bravely for a time, and retaliated with sparks and spiteful tongues of flame; but gradually its spirit was broken, only a heavy body of coal and half-consumed logs in the centre holding ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs
... gloomy ranges, at the foot of an ironbark, The bonnie, winsome laddie was lying stiff and stark; For the Reckless mare had smashed him against a leaning limb, And his comely face was battered, and his merry ...
— The Man from Snowy River • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... of man's infra-rational nature. The glory of the Stoics is to have built up a religion of extraordinary nobleness; the glory of the Epicureans is to have upheld an ideal of sanity and humanity stark upright amid a reeling world, and, like the old Spartans, never to have yielded one inch of ground ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray
... see the Beecham's house, stark white in the early morning light. It was after seven o'clock, he thought, and the family would soon be at breakfast. A small stream of smoke drifted up from the kitchen chimney, wavering and drooping ...
— Tom of the Raiders • Austin Bishop
... from, off the quarter-deck, for they kept no look-out from the mast-head, and we presently observed they were in chace of us. The French and Spaniards on board now began to grow a good deal alarmed, when it fell stark calm, but not before the ships had neared us so much, that we plainly discerned them to be English men of war, the one a two-decker, the other a twenty-gun ship. The French had now thoughts, when a breeze should spring up, of running the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr


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