stark / stärk/ • adj. 1. severe or bare in appearance or outline: the ridge formed a stark silhouette against the sky. ∎  unpleasantly or sharply clear; impossible to avoid: his position on civil rights is in stark contrast to that of his liberal opponent the stark reality of life for deprived minorities.2. complete; sheer: he came running back in stark terror. ∎ rare completely naked.3. archaic or poetic/lit. stiff, rigid, or incapable of movement: a human body lying stiff and stark by the stream. ∎  physically strong or powerful: the dragoons were stark fellows.PHRASES: stark naked completely naked.stark raving mad inf. completely crazy.DERIVATIVES: stark·ly adv. the reality is starkly different.stark·ness n.

stark †hard, unyielding; †violent, severe OE.; (arch.) strong, stout XIII; (dial.) rigid, stiff; sheer, absolute XIV; naked XVIII. OE. stearc = OS., (O)HG. stark, (M)Du. sterk, ON. sterkr :- Gmc. *starkaz, the weak grade of the base being repr. by OHG. gistorchanēn grow rigid, Goth. gastaurknan dry up, ON. styrkr strong, strength. In s. blind (XV) and s. dead (XIV) used adv. for ‘quite’, from the sense ‘rigid’; similarly s. naked (XVI), for earlier (dial.) start naked (XIII) steort naket, f. †start (OE. steort) tail, as if orig. ‘naked even to the tail’.

Stark ★½ 1985

Wichita detective journeys to Las Vegas in an effort to locate his missing sister. During his search, he finds himself taking on the mob. Pilot for a TV series that never happened, and Tidyman's last screenplay. A sequel, “Stark: Mirror Image,” was made in 1986. 94m/C VHS . Nicolas Surovy, Dennis Hopper, Marilu Henner, Seth Jaffe; D: Rod Holcomb; W: Ernest Tidyman. TV

stark (Ger.). Strong, loud; so stärker, stronger, louder. stark anblasen, stark blasend. Strongly blown (wind instr.).