[f. STARK a. + -NESS.]
1. Rigidity, stiffness (of the body or limbs).
c. 1440. Promp. Parv., 472/2. Starkenesse (or styfnesse) rigor, rigiditas, artitudo.
1544. Phaër, Regim. Life (1560), R vj b. Of the stifnes or starckenes of limmes.
1627. [R. Bernard], Guide to Grand Jury Men, I. ii. 17. With a generall starknesse and stiffenesse.
1846. Trench, Mirac., xxvii. (1862), 368, note. The stiffness and starkness, the unnatural rigescence of the limbs in the accesses of the disorder.
a. 1893. Christina Rossetti, Verses, 135. Night for the dead in their stiffness and starkness!
† 2. ? ‘Stark’ or utter privation. Obs.
1544. Betham, Precepts War, I. lxxvii. E j b. His souldiours … were wyllynge to fyght, fastyng and undyned: wherby the mooste parte of them clunged for colde, was rather by starknesse of meat, than by ye violence of theyr enemies slayne.
1616. J. Lane, Contn. Sqr.’s T., VI. 86. So tooke hee order how his campe and shipps shoold bee revictualld, ear them starcnes nipps.
3. Sternness, harshness. arch. (See STARK a. 2 b.)
1884. M. Creighton, Hist. Ess., viii. (1903), 248. He [William I.] let men feel his starkness by his remorseless harrying of the north.
4. Absoluteness, utterness.
1641. Milton, Animadv., Wks. 1851, III. 220. How should wee have yeelded to his heavenly call, had we beene taken, as they were, in the starknes of our ignorance.
1849. H. Rogers, Ess. (1860), III. 252. Those legislative pedants … who would propose to give New Zealanders and Hottentots in the starkness of their savage ignorance, the complex forms of the British Constitution.
5. Bareness, nakedness.
a. 1849. J. C. Mangan, Poems (1859), 415. The rocks with their steepness, And the earth with its starkness.
1896. Mrs. Caffyn, Quaker Grandmother, 101. It would go hard with her before that thought, with anything of the starkness of fact about it, could so much as enter into her mind.
