stark
/stɑɹk/
Word Rarity
Uncommon
Frequency: Zipf frequency 4.01 in modern English
9
Scrabble Score
5
Letters
1
Syllables
5
Unique Chars
Meaning
adj
Plain in appearance; barren, desolate.
adj
adv
Example Sentences
- "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."
- "Stark beer, boy, stout and strong beer."
- "a stark, moss-trooping Scot"
- "His heauie head, deuoide of carefull carke, / Whose sences all were straight benumbd and starke."
- "Many a nobleman lies stark and stiff / Under the hoofs of vaunting enemies."
- "The north is not so stark and cold."
Etymology
From Middle English stark, starc, from Old English stearc, starc (“stiff, rigid, unyielding, obstinate, hard, strong, severe, violent”), from Proto-West Germanic *stark, from Proto-Germanic *starkuz (“stiff, strong”), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)terg- (“rigid, stiff”). Cognate with Saterland Frisian sterc (“strong”), Dutch sterk (“strong”), Low German sterk (“strong”), German stark (“strong”), Danish stærk (“strong”), Swedish stark (“strong”), Norwegian sterk (“strong”), Icelandic sterkur (“strong”). Related to starch. In the phrase stark naked: an alternation of Middle English stert naked, from stert (“tail”), a literal parallel to the modern butt naked.
Origin
Word Breakdown
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /stɑɹk/
- British English: /stɑːk/