stark

Meanings

1. 1
   adv

   completely

   stark mad

2. 2
   adj

   complete or extreme

   stark poverty

3. 3
   adj

   severely simple

   a stark interior

4. 4
   adj

   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 around, it changes everything.

5. 5
   adj

   Strong; vigorous; powerful.

   Stark beer, boy, stout and strong beer.

6. 6
   adj

   Stiff, rigid.

   His heauie head, deuoide of carefull carke, / Whose sences all were straight benumbd and starke.

7. 7
   adj

   Plain in appearance; barren, desolate.

   I picked my way forlornly through the stark, sharp rocks.

8. 8
   adj

   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 friendless care Guided my steps the cavern-paths along […]

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, f…