starry
Americanadjective
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filled, covered with, or illuminated by stars
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of, like, or relating to a star or stars
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Adjectives
Etymology
Origin of starry
Middle English word dating back to 1325–75; see origin at star, -y 1
Explanation
Starry things are either full of stars, like the starry night sky, or they look like stars, like the starry white flowers in your garden. An astronaut may have the chance to look out at the starry universe or distant, starry galaxies—and you can do this too, if you have a powerful telescope. The adjective starry almost always describes the night sky, unless a poet describes starry eyes or starry fields of flowers. If someone calls you starry-eyed, they mean that you're unrealistically optimistic.
Vocabulary lists containing starry
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.
See Examples For:
Open’s starry mixed doubles event, but that’s the hope, with the journalist Ben Rothenberg reporting Alcaraz has been planning to compete with none other than Serena Williams.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 21, 2026
In Montecito, the couple became a starry addition to the seaside community’s roster of wealthy residents.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 20, 2026
As I ring the doorbell of Maggie O'Farrell's Edinburgh home, I wonder with some trepidation whether the acclaimed novelist might have become a bit starry after the whirlwind few months she's just had.
From BBC ● May 22, 2026
Highlights of the starry season not listed here include Daniel Radcliffe in “Every Brilliant Thing” and Adrien Brody and Tessa Thompson in “The Fear of 13.”
From Los Angeles Times ● May 5, 2026
My descent slows, and before long, I’m being pulled upward through the starry water.
From "Kwame Crashes the Underworld" by Craig Kofi Farmer
The unwritten rules: the bigger, the louder, the splashier, the starrier, the better.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 27, 2025
Mel Brooks, Angela Bassett and film editor Carol Littleton will collect honorary Oscar statuettes at a private, untelevised dinner Tuesday night in Los Angeles that has often been even starrier than the Oscars themselves.
From Seattle Times ● Jan. 9, 2024
The “Star Wars” universe just got even starrier.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 6, 2023
The festival had been starrier then, he thought; he’d interviewed Jon Hamm and Annette Bening, and run into Blythe Danner on the street.
From Washington Post ● Jan. 29, 2023
A wild, desperate, half-savage air had supplanted that ingenuous mien, diffident in its grace, earnest in its diffidence, which had once characterised the young worshipper of Art, the dreaming aspirant after some starrier lore.
From Zanoni by Edward Bulwer Lytton, Baron Lytton
Stripped of their starriest player and many trusted associates, they’ve morphed into a tighter outfit that plays unselfish team basketball and relies on every player to shoot, rebound and defend.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Mar. 2, 2026
Brazilian director Karim Ainouz's surreal satire "Rosebush Pruning" premiered on Saturday at the Berlin Film Festival with one of the programme's starriest casts portraying an outrageously spoiled and dysfunctional family descending into chaos.
From Barron's ● Feb. 14, 2026
Like the Oscars this year, there was something warmer and lower key than usual about this starriest of after-parties.
From Washington Post ● Mar. 13, 2023
The soprano — who made her unforgettable Ojai debut 11 years ago while still a student of Dawn Upshaw, that year’s music director — was to have been the festival’s starriest attraction.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 15, 2022
From the dome Of starriest Night two blest Immortals come, To bear us spheral-ward to God's own mercy-seat.
From Hesperus and Other Poems and Lyrics by Charles Sangster
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.
