stark

Of all the transitions brought about on the Earth’s surface by temperature change, the melting of ice into water is the starkest. It is binary. And for the land beneath, the air above and the life around, it changes everything.

a stark, moss-trooping Scot

His heauie head, deuoide of carefull carke, / Whose sences all were straight benumbd and starke.

I picked my way forlornly through the stark, sharp rocks.

They bore me to a cavern in the hill

Beneath that column, and unbound me there;

And one did strip me stark; and one did fill

A vessel from the putrid pool; one bare

A lighted torch, and four with friendless care

Guided my steps the cavern-paths along […]

I screamed in stark terror.