Word.ws English Dictionary

starky

starky adjective: stiff, rigid, hard to work (e.g. with a needle or plough).

Adjective

starky

  1. (dialectal, obsolete, possibly) Stiff, rigid, hard to work (e.g. with a needle or plough).
    • His Hands would be as hard, dry and starky, as if he had wrought for his Living, at Cleaving of Wood.1697, R. Pierce, Bath Mem., II, V, page 312, quoted in the OED
    • if the ground be so dry and starky, that eight oxen and an horse must be put to the plough, so much the better; […]1757, Edward Lisle, Observations in Husbandry, page 50

Origin of starky

Compare stark.

Questions about starky

What does starky mean?
Starky means stiff, rigid, hard to work (e.g. with a needle or plough).
What part of speech is starky?
Starky is an adjective.

Words near starky in the dictionary

  1. Starkville
  2. starkwater
  3. starkwaters
  4. Starkweather
  5. Starkweathers
  6. starky
  7. Starla
  8. Starland County
  9. starless
  10. starlessly
  11. starlessness

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: starky (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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