Showing results for "starring"

• present participle of star.

starring

American  

[stahr-ing] / ˈstɑr ɪŋ /

adjective

1. featured or celebrated as a star in a movie, on a sports team, etc..

   He was already the starring quarterback on his high school football team, which was on its way to a state championship.

2. (of a character or role) leading, central, or primary.

   The earliest performance I can remember is when I played the starring role in a drama called The Littlest Angel at church.

   As the town’s largest employer, the university also plays a starring role in the local economy.

3. featuring a specified performer.

   They didn't give a beginner a starring movie when I started acting 18 years ago.

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Etymology

Origin of starring

star ( def. ) + -ing ² ( def. )

Explanation

Your attention-grabbing friend might be one who goes through life imagining it's a movie starring her. Starring means being the main character in a movie or play. Starring is an adjective that's used when someone's at the center of things, like a concert starring a famous cellist. The Greek word aster became the English word star, which was first used to mean "to be featured in a play" in the 1820s. If you imagine a star shining brightly in the dark night sky, it's easy to see how starring came to mean "being the most important on the stage."

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

starring

He introduced the couple’s adorable white pup to the world while starring in Tommy Hilfiger’s fall 2026 ad campaign.

From MarketWatch ● Sep. 7, 2026

But Chawawa has since branched out from social media - making two Bafta-nominated TV documentaries, starring on Taskmaster and doing stand-up comedy.

From BBC ● Sep. 6, 2026

Celebrate Labor Day with a new tradition: Sorry to Bother You, Boots Riley’s 2018 film starring LaKeith Stanfield, is a rollicking sci-fi black comedy about a dystopian workplace.

From Slate ● Sep. 4, 2026

Patricia Hitchcock regarded “Notorious”—Alfred Hitchcock’s 1946 film starring Cary Grant, Ingrid Bergman and Claude Rains—as her father’s finest, and one can see why.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 4, 2026

She looks like she was plucked right out of an anime, starring an Afro Korean swordswoman.

From "Kwame Crashes the Underworld" by Craig Kofi Farmer