Word.ws English Dictionary

starkly

starkly adverb: in a stark manner; with great contrast.

Adverb

starkly (comparative more starkly, superlative most starkly)

  1. In a stark manner; with great contrast.
    • The dark mountains stood out starkly against the pale sky.
    • We initially came to this data collection technique through research conducted into the linguistic landscape at NIE which yielded an overwhelmingly English-biased signage which was starkly at odds with our own day-to-day experience at the institute.2019, Li Huang, James Lambert, “Another Arrow for the Quiver: A New Methodology for Multilingual Researchers”, in Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, →DOI, page 1

Forms of starkly

comparativemore starkly
superlativemost starkly

Origin of starkly

From Middle English starkli, starcliche, sterkliche, stercliche, from Old English stearclīċe (“strongly; stoutly; vigorously; vehemently; fiercely; strictly”), from Proto-Germanic *starkulīka (“strongly; stiffly”), from *starkulīkaz (“strong; rigid”), from *starkuz (“strong; stiff; stark”), equivalent to stark + -ly.

Questions about starkly

What does starkly mean?
Starkly means in a stark manner; with great contrast.
What part of speech is starkly?
Starkly is an adverb.

Words near starkly in the dictionary

  1. starkeyite
  2. starking
  3. starkish
  4. Starkling
  5. Starklings
  6. starkly
  7. Starkman
  8. Starkmans
  9. starkness
  10. starknesses
  11. starks

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: starkly (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “starkly.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/starkly. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.