instar

Noun

instar (plural instars)

1. Any one of the several stages of postembryonic development which an arthropod undergoes, between molts, before it reaches sexual maturity.
2. An arthropod at a specified one of these stages of development.
   • In A. orientalis, first and second instars were more susceptible than third instars to H. bacteriophora TF strain, […]2005, Nematodes as biocontrol agents, edited by Parwinder S. Grewal, Ralf-Udo Ehlers, and David I. Shapiro-Ilan, (Please provide the book title or journal name), page 133
3. (broadly) A stage in development.
   • We avoided Tourist Homes, country cousins of Funeral ones, old-fashioned, genteel and showerless, with elaborate dressing tables in depressingly white-and-pink little bedrooms, and photographs of the landlady’s children in all their instars.1955, Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: G[eorge] P[almer] Putnam’s Sons, published August 1958, →OCLC, part 2, page 148
   • California spirituality is a late instar of America’s utopian impulse, and corporate meritocracy derives from the Whig dream of the self-made man that entranced young Abraham Lincoln.2014 January 8, Caleb Crain, “The Democratic Personality”, in The New Yorker

Verb

UK/ɪnˈstɑː/US/ɪnˈstɑɹ/

instar (third-person singular simple present instars, present participle instarring, simple past and past participle instarred)

1. (archaic, transitive) To stud or adorn with stars or other brilliants; to star.
   • Yet mark with shining steps the humbler way;
     And, as angelic feet instar the sky,
     Drop the bright sparks along the wilderness.1882, Frederick Randolph Abbe, The Temple Rebuilt: A Poem, page 125
   • Espey could distinguish through the clear darkness the fringed branches of a pine-tree clinging to the heights above and waving against the instarred sky, and below a vague moving whiteness […]1893, The Atlantic Monthly, volume 72, page 507
2. (transitive) To make a star of; set as a star.