Etymology

From Middle EnglishCategory:English terms inherited from Middle English#STARLESSCategory:English terms derived from Middle English#STARLESS sterreles, equivalent to star +‎ -lessCategory:English terms suffixed with -less#STARLESS. Piecewise doublet of asterlessCategory:English piecewise doublets#STARLESS.

Pronunciation

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  Category:English terms with audio pronunciation#STARLESS

Adjective

starless (not comparable)Category:English lemmas#STARLESSCategory:English adjectives#STARLESSCategory:English uncomparable adjectives#STARLESSCategory:English entries with incorrect language header#STARLESSCategory:Pages with entries#STARLESSCategory:Pages with 1 entry#STARLESS

1. Without visible stars.

   Synonym: unstarry

   The starless night was very dark.Category:English terms with usage examples#STARLESS

   • 1667, John Milton, “Book III”, in Paradise Lost. […], London: […] [Samuel Simmons], and are to be sold by Peter Parker […]; [a]nd by Robert Boulter […]; [a]nd Matthias Walker, […], →OCLC; republished as Paradise Lost in Ten Books: […], London: Basil Montagu Pickering […], 1873, →OCLC, lines 422-6:

     A globe far off / It seemed, now seems a boundless continent / Dark, waste, and wild, under the frown of Night / Starless exposed, and ever-threatening storms / Of Chaos blustering round, inclement sky;

     Category:English terms with quotations#STARLESS

   • 1895 May 29, H[erbert] G[eorge] Wells, chapter 11, in The Time Machine: An Invention, London: William Heinemann, →OCLC:

     The sky was no longer blue. North-eastward it was inky black, and out of the blackness shone brightly and steadily the pale white stars. Overhead it was a deep Indian red and starless, and south-eastward it grew brighter to a glowing scarlet where, cut by the horizon, lay the huge hull of the sun, red and motionless.

     Category:English terms with quotations#STARLESS

   • 1931, Sinclair Lewis, “Ring Around a Rosy”, in I'm a Stranger Here Myself and Other Stories, Dell, published 1962, page 160:

     A searchlight wounded the starless dark.

     Category:English terms with quotations#STARLESS

   • 1940, Robert Hayden, "Sonnet to E.," lines 1-2, in Heart-Shape in the Dust, cited in "Robert Hayden: The Apprenticeship: Heart-Shape in the Dust (1940)", African-American Poets, Volume 1: 1700s—1940s, edited by Harold Bloom, Infobase, 2009, p. 15,

     Beloved, there have been starless times when I / Have longed to join the alien hosts of death,

   • 1962, James Baldwin, Another Country, Dell, published 1985, Book One, Chapter 1, p. 10:

     A hotel's enormous neon name challenged the starless sky.

     Category:English terms with quotations#STARLESS

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   • 1992, Toni Morrison, Jazz, New York: Vintage, published 2004, page 35:

     […] there is nothing to beat what the City can make of a nightsky. It can empty itself of surface, and more like the ocean than the ocean itself, go deep, starless.

     Category:English terms with quotations#STARLESS

     Category:Quotation templates to be cleaned