stark-naked
Americanadjective
adjective
Etymology
Origin of stark-naked
1520–30; stark + naked; replacing start-naked ( start, Middle English; Old English steort tail; cognate with Dutch staart, Old High German sterz, Old Norse stertr )
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.
From the steep Blue Mountains of the Great Dividing Range it speeds toward the stark-naked Nullarbor Plain.
From Time Magazine Archive
The next day some of Speke’s men were lured into the huts of the natives by an invitation to dinner, but, when they got them there, they stripped them stark-naked and let them go again.
From Great African Travellers From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley by Kingston, William Henry Giles
One of the blank-verse pieces of Men and Women rebukes a youthful poet of the transcendental school whose ambition is to set forth "stark-naked thought" in poetry.
From Robert Browning by Dowden, Edward
Fifty more slaves were freed next day in another village; and, the whole party being stark-naked, cloth enough was left to clothe them, better probably than they had ever been clothed before.
From A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and its tributaries And of the Discovery of Lakes Shirwa and Nyassa, 1858-1864 by Livingstone, David
The bull-feaster, then in his sleep, at the end of the night beheld a man stark-naked, passing along the road of Tara, with a stone in his sling.
From The Harvard Classics, Volume 49, Epic and Saga With Introductions And Notes by Eliot, Charles William
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.
