stark-naked
Americanadjective
adjective
Etymology
Origin of stark-naked
1520–30; stark + naked; replacing start-naked ( start, Middle English; Old English steort tail; cognate with Dutch staart, Old High German sterz, Old Norse stertr )
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
From the steep Blue Mountains of the Great Dividing Range it speeds toward the stark-naked Nullarbor Plain.
From Time Magazine Archive
This watercourse runs between a background of reddish-brown rock, the foot-hills and sub-ranges of the grand block, "El-Zánah," to the north; and a foreground of pale-yellow, stark-naked gypsum, apparently tongue-shaped.
From The Land of Midian — Volume 1 by Burton, Richard Francis, Sir
They knew not how they should behave, For all from Heav'n stark-naked came; But Poetry their garments gave, And then not one had cause for shame.
From The Poems of Goethe Translated in the original metres by Bowring, Edgar Alfred
The next day some of Speke’s men were lured into the huts of the natives by an invitation to dinner, but, when they got them there, they stripped them stark-naked and let them go again.
From Great African Travellers From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley by Kingston, William Henry Giles
Page 1399 The men of the Choising told us afterward 'We couldn't make out what that meant, those stark-naked fellows all cheering.'
From The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 12) Neuve Chapelle, Battle of Ypres, Przemysl, Mazurian Lakes by Churchill, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
