starker

Adjective

stark (comparative starker, superlative starkest)

1. (obsolete) Hard, firm; obdurate.
2. 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.2013 May 11, “The climate of Tibet: Pole-land”, in The Economist, volume 407, number 8835, page 80
3. (archaic, literary, poetic) Strong; vigorous; powerful.
   • Stark beer, boy, stout and strong beer.c. 1622, John Fletcher, Philip Massinger [et al.?], “Beggars Bush”, in Comedies and Tragedies […], London: […] Humphrey Robinson, […], and for Humphrey Moseley […], published 1647, →OCLC, Act III...
4. Stiff, rigid.
   • His heauie head, deuoide of carefull carke, / Whose sences all were straight benumbd and starke.1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book I, Canto I”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC, stanza 44
5. Plain in appearance; barren, desolate.
   • I picked my way forlornly through the stark, sharp rocks.
6. 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 […]1817 December, Percy Bysshe Shelley, “The Revolt of Islam. […]”, in [Mary] Shelley, editor, The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley. […], volume I, London: Edward Moxon […], published 1839, →OCLC...

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