a. (and sb.) [f. STARK adv. 2; altered from the earlier START-NAKED.]
1. Of a person: Absolutely without clothing.
1530. Palsgr., 842/1. Starke bely naked, tout fin mere nud.… Starke naked, tout fin nud.
1560. Daus, trans. Sleidane’s Comm., 356. They left them starcke naked.
1606. Shaks., Ant. & Cl., V. ii. 59. Rather on Nylus mudde Lay me starke-nak’d.
1771. Robertson, Hist. Amer. (1778), I. 474. Both sexes go stark-naked.
1840. R. H. Dana, Bef. Mast, xvi. 44. The little children were running about among the huts, stark naked.
1913. Sir H. Johnston, Pioneers Australasia, vii. 227. Cook … commenced to parley by signs, and to bespeak the goodwill of these stark-naked savages.
b. transf. and fig.
1601. Shaks., Twel. N., III. iv. 274. Therefore on, or strippe your sword starke naked.
1712. Steele, Spect., No. 268, ¶ 9. I came to my Mistress’s Toilet this Morning, for I am admitted when her Face is stark naked.
1765. H. Walpole, Lett. to Miss A. Pitt, 25 Dec. The rest of the room is stark naked.
1779. Warner, in Jesse, Selwyn & Contemp. (1844), IV. 246. A great stark-naked new house on an eminence, without a morsel of anything green about it.
1881. Athenæum, 27 Aug., 267/2. This is the essential difficulty, stated in its simplest and stark-naked form, of the position of the British Government in India.
1895. Dialect Notes, (Amer. Dial. Soc. 1896), I. VIII. 379. Naked, starknaked: of tea without milk or sugar,—pure, undiluted.
2. sb. Unadulterated spirit; esp. raw gin. slang.
1820. J. H. Reynolds, Fancy (1906), 83. To take of Deady’s bright stark naked A glass or so.
1821. The Watchman (Montpelier, VT), 20 Feb., 4/3. I shall commence with the morning potation, an ‘eye opener,’ then a ‘fog-cutter,’ followed by a ‘slug;’ and a glass of ‘brilliant stark-naked,’ or a little of ‘the old complaint.’
1830. Lytton, Paul Clifford, I. iv. 58. His ‘bingo’ was unexceptionable; and as for his ‘stark naked,’ it was voted the most brilliant thing in nature.
1860. Hotten’s Slang Dict., 227. Stark-naked,… raw gin.
