starch

From Middle English starche (noun), from *starche, sterch (“stiff”, adj), an assibilated form of Middle English stark, sterk (“strong; stiff”), from Old English stearc (“stark; strong; rough”). Compare Middle High German sterke, German Stärke. More at stark.

• (US) IPA^(key): /stɑɹtʃ/
• (UK) IPA^(key): /stɑːtʃ/

• Audio (US)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɑː(ɹ)tʃ

starch (countable and uncountable, plural starches)

1. (uncountable) A widely diffused vegetable substance found especially in seeds, bulbs, and tubers, and extracted (as from potatoes, corn, rice, etc.) as a white, glistening, granular or powdery substance, without taste or smell, and giving a very peculiar creaking sound when rubbed between the fingers. It is used as a food, in the production of commercial grape sugar, for stiffening linen in laundries, in making paste, etc.
2. (nutrition, countable) Carbohydrates, as with grain and potato based foods.
3. (uncountable, figuratively) A stiff, formal manner; formality.

   (Can we find and add a quotation of Addison to this entry?)

4. (countable) Any of various starch-like substances used as a laundry stiffener

• starchy
• cornstarch
• potato starch

starch (third-person singular simple present starches, present participle starching, simple past and past participle starched)

1. To apply or treat with laundry starch, to create a hard, smooth surface.

   She starched her blouses.

starch (not comparable)

1. Stiff; precise; rigid.

   (Can we find and add a quotation of Killingbeck to this entry?)

• starchness

• starch in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.

• charts, crasht, trachs

starch

1. strong
2. loud

• Umberto Patuzzi, ed., (2013) Ünsarne Börtar, Luserna: Comitato unitario delle linguistiche storiche germaniche in Italia / Einheitskomitee der historischen deutschen Sprachinseln in Italien