Definition of "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.

2013 May 11, “The climate of Tibet: Pole-land”, in The Economist‎, volume 407, number 8835, page 80

a stark, moss-trooping Scot

1805, Walter Scott, “(please specify the page)”, in The Lay of the Last Minstrel: A Poem, London: […] [James Ballantyne] for Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, […], and A[rchibald] Constable and Co., […]

Stark beer, boy, stout and strong beer.

c. 1622, John Fletcher, Philip Massinger [et al.?], “Beggars Bvsh”, in Comedies and Tragedies […], London: […] Humphrey Robinson, […], and for Humphrey Moseley […], published 1647, Act III, scene ii

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

1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book I, Canto I”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, stanza 44

Many a nobleman lies stark and stiff / Under the hoofs of vaunting enemies.

c. 1597 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The First Part of Henry the Fourth, […]”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, [Act V, scene iii]

The north is not so stark and cold.

1611, Ben[jamin] Jonson, Catiline His Conspiracy, London: […] [William Stansby?] for Walter Burre, (please specify |act=I to V)

They bore me to a cavern in the hillBeneath that column, and unbound me there;And one did strip me stark; and one did fillA vessel from the putrid pool; one bareA lighted torch, and four with friendless careGuided my steps the cavern-paths along […]

1817 December, Percy Bysshe Shelley, “The Revolt of Islam. […]”, in [Mary] Shelley, editor, The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley. […], volume I, London: Edward Moxon […], published 1839, page 211

Consider, first, the stark security / The commonwealth is in now.

1611, Ben[jamin] Jonson, Catiline His Conspiracy, London: […] [William Stansby?] for Walter Burre, (please specify |act=I to V)

Rhetoric is very good or stark naught; there's no medium in rhetoric.

1689 (first published posthumously), John Selden, Table-Talk

Ramadans, and prolonged ham-squattings in cold, cheerless rooms were stark nonsense

1851 November 14, Herman Melville, chapter 17, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley

[…] held him strangled in his arms till he was stark dead.The spelling has been modernized.

1655, Thomas Fuller, edited by James Nichols, The Church History of Britain, […], new edition, volumes (please specify |volume=I to III), London: […] [James Nichols] for Thomas Tegg and Son, […], published 1837

“… That woman is stark mad, Lord Stranleigh. Her own father recognised it when he bereft her of all power in the great business he founded. …”

1913, Robert Barr, chapter 4, in Lord Stranleigh Abroad‎