stark
1 Americanadjective
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sheer, utter, downright, or complete.
This plan is stark madness!
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harsh, grim, or desolate, as a view, place, etc..
Her photos capture the stark desert landscape.
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extremely simple or severe.
With its stark interior and rough ride, the car scores low in our luxury car ranking.
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bluntly or sternly plain; not softened or glamorized.
He panicked suddenly at the stark reality of the approaching deadline.
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distinct, sharp, or vivid.
The thriving community gardens stood in stark contrast to vacant land and abandoned buildings.
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stiff or rigid in substance, muscles, etc.
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rigid in death.
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Archaic. strong; powerful; massive or robust.
adverb
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utterly, absolutely, or quite.
stark mad.
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Chiefly Scot. and North England. in a stark manner; stoutly or vigorously.
noun
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Harold Raynsford 1880–1972, U.S. admiral.
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Johannes 1874–1957, German physicist: Nobel Prize 1919.
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John, 1728–1822, American Revolutionary War general.
adjective
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(usually prenominal) devoid of any elaboration; blunt
the stark facts
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grim; desolate
a stark landscape
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(usually prenominal) utter; absolute
stark folly
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archaic severe; violent
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archaic rigid, as in death (esp in the phrases stiff and stark, stark dead )
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short for stark-naked
adverb
noun
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Dame Freya ( Madeline ) (ˈfreɪə). 1893–1993, British traveller and writer, whose many books include The Southern Gates of Arabia (1936), Beyond Euphrates (1951), and The Journey's Echo (1963)
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Johannes (joˈhanəs). 1874–1957, German physicist, who discovered the splitting of the lines of a spectrum when the source of light is subjected to a strong electrostatic field ( Stark effect , 1913): Nobel prize for physics 1919
Related Words
Other Word Forms
- starkly adverb
- starkness noun
Etymology
Origin of stark
First recorded before 900; (adjective) Middle English; Old English stearc “stiff, firm”; cognate with German stark “strong”; akin to Old Norse sterkr “strong”; akin to starch, stare; (adverb) Middle English sterke, derivative of the adjective
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Her frequent appearances are a stark departure from the traditional secrecy surrounding children of the ruling Kim family.
This week's escalation marked the first time that Pakistan has focused its air strikes on Afghan government facilities, analysts noted, a stark change from previous operations that it said targeted militants.
From Barron's
These comparisons aren’t exactly nuanced but they are stark and, for most of the film, Franco just asks us to watch them move together and apart, in a strange, avoidant pas de deux.
From Los Angeles Times
This stark warning emanates from one of Wall Street’s most respected commentators, Bank of America chief equity strategist Michael Hartnett.
From MarketWatch
Chief fire officer Jonathan Dyson said the presumed cause was "a stark reminder of how quickly wildfires can take hold, particularly in hot, dry and windy conditions".
From BBC
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
