stark
- adjective
- /stɑrk/
- In the distance, a lone boxcar, stark against the winter landscape.
- stark contrast
- stark landscape
- stark naked
Really cool, really stark modern sound.
- Really cool, really stark modern sound.
- You know, particularly when I taught at Yale, Ivy Leaguey type places, it's very stark.
- But when her in her poems where she addresses issue of reception and racism, her work is full of images of stark, leafless scratching, pointing trees.
- So it's just this empty, stark looking space, kind of messy looking space for, you know, good five months out of the year.
- I think of Atlantis, buried under ice, gone one day from sight, the shore from which it rose now glacial and stark.
Examples
-
The trees' knobby gray limbs draped their supporting scaffoldings, stark and leafless in winter.
Fiction book (1995) -
Because it's such a stark contrast to daily life in this part of the world.
-
The whole place, in stark contrast to the Washington Navy Yard, is ready to go to war.
Fiction book (1992) -
It has a stark beauty all its own, it's like much of the high desert of the United States.
-
The sounds of birds rang out as we rumbled along dusty roads past stark, squat villages.
Fiction book (1992) -
Under a burning sun, they walked silently and awed through the stark, shadeless ruins of Tikal.
Fiction book (1996) -
The abandoned house stood in stark silence, with broken windows and no signs of life.
-
The landscape was stark and bare after the wildfire, with charred trees and blackened earth.
-
In stark contrast to the vibrant colors of spring, the winter scenery was cold and lifeless.
Synonyms
Not covered or protected, showing the plain surface
Land where plants and animals cannot grow
Not attractive to look at
Empty and bleak with little life or shelter
An open empty place with little shelter or plants
Having a simple style with no extra decoration
Plain and severe in appearance without decoration
Antonyms
Idioms
How Bare
Surface Forms
Etymology
Stark comes from the same old English stearc and old German stark, which mean 'strong' or 'severe'. A helpful picture is a place stripped of comfort by something strong, so a 'stark' room or landscape feels very plain, cold, or desolate.