| / English Dictionary |
STARK
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (adjective)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Devoid of any qualifications or disguise or adornment
Example:
facing the stark reality of the deadline
Synonyms:
Classified under:
Similar:
unconditional; unconditioned (not conditional)
Derivation:
starkness (the quality of being complete or utter or extreme)
Sense 2
Meaning:
Providing no shelter or sustenance
Example:
a stark landscape
Synonyms:
bare; barren; bleak; desolate; stark
Classified under:
Similar:
inhospitable (unfavorable to life or growth)
Derivation:
starkness (an extreme lack of furnishings or ornamentation)
Sense 3
Meaning:
Without qualification; used informally as (often pejorative) intensifiers
Example:
the unadulterated truth
Synonyms:
arrant; complete; consummate; double-dyed; everlasting; gross; perfect; pure; sodding; staring; stark; thorough; thoroughgoing; unadulterated; utter
Classified under:
Adjectives
Similar:
unmitigated (not diminished or moderated in intensity or severity; sometimes used as an intensifier)
Sense 4
Meaning:
Complete or extreme
Example:
a stark contrast
Classified under:
Adjectives
Similar:
immoderate (beyond reasonable limits)
Derivation:
starkness (the quality of being complete or utter or extreme)
Sense 5
Meaning:
Severely simple
Example:
a stark interior
Synonyms:
Classified under:
Adjectives
Similar:
plain (not elaborate or elaborated; simple)
Derivation:
starkness (an extreme lack of furnishings or ornamentation)
II. (adverb)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Completely
Example:
mouth stark open
Classified under:
Context examples:
Still, she allowed, "the owd maister was like other folk—naught mich out o' t' common way: stark mad o' shooting, and farming, and sich like."
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
He is mad, stark, raving mad, and it's no use my trying to stop him.
(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)
I pictured the look in his eyes as the haze of sleep cleared slowly away from them, the look of anger turning suddenly to stark horror as he understood who I was and what I had come for.
(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
Add to this that Gray, the new man, had his face tied up in a bandage for a cut he had got in breaking away from the mutineers and that poor old Tom Redruth, still unburied, lay along the wall, stiff and stark, under the Union Jack.
(Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson)
The distance between the two stars is less than between Mercury and the Sun, and about eight percent of an astronomical unit, in stark contrast to the 100–1000 astronomical units that typically separates two stars in such a system.
(Astronomers discover smallest known star, Wikinews)
They were stark naked, men, women, and children, round a fire, as I could discover by the smoke.
(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)
My hopes were all dead—struck with a subtle doom, such as, in one night, fell on all the first-born in the land of Egypt. I looked on my cherished wishes, yesterday so blooming and glowing; they lay stark, chill, livid corpses that could never revive.
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
He began again with a bit of a heaviness in his head the next day—that is, a fortnight sin'—and he went to sleep and niver wakened: he wor a'most stark when your brother went into t' chamber and fand him.
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
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