a. Obs. exc. dial. Forms: 3 steortnaket, steor(t)naked, stert naked, (4 star naked), 4, 9 dial. start naked. [App. f. START sb.1 + NAKED a.
The literal sense would seem to be ‘naked even to the tail.’ Start has not been found in Eng. with the sense ‘buttocks’ (= TAIL sb.1 5), but the MDu. and Ger. equivalents are so used.]
Entirely naked; = STARK-NAKED a.
a. 1225. Juliana, 16 (Roy. MS.). & he het hatterliche strupen hire steortnaket [Bodl. MS. steort naket].
a. 1225. Ancr. R., 148. Heo haueð bipiled mine figer … despoiled hire stert [printed sterc] naked, & iworpen awei [etc.]. Ibid., 316. Bicleope þine sunne steornaked; þet is, ne hele þu nowiht of al þet liþ þer abuten.
13[?]. Pol. Songs (Camden), 336. Sholde he for everi fals uth lese kirtel or kote,… He sholde stonde start [printed starc] naked twye o day or eve.
c. 1320. Cast. Love, 431, in Minor Poems fr. Vernon MS., xxxviii. And I-strupt him al start-naked.
a. 1325. in Horstm., Altengl. Leg. (1878), 140. Þai lay þerin all star naked.
1892. Dialect Notes (Amer. Dial. Soc. 1896) I. v. 234. Start-naked: stark naked. ‘He is a start-naked villain.’… Mr. A. W. Long, of North Carolina, reports that he never heard any other form than start-naked used in conversation in that state; and that two of his friends—one from Virginia, and the other from South Carolina—make the same statement for those two states.
1896. Warwicksh. Gloss.
