starlessadj.

a1393 J. Gower Confessio Amantis (Fairf.) vii. l. 1024 This Bole is ek with sterres set, Thurgh whiche he hath hise hornes knet Unto the tail of Aries, So is he noght ther sterreles.

1609 T. Heywood Troia Britanica xv. sig. Kk6 Strip their bright Swords, by whose quicke glimering light, They find their way in the darke star-lesse night.

1659 tr. P. Gassendi Vanity of Judiciary Astrol. xv. 98 What if no Star of those in the Signifer, or space of the Zodiack (as there are more Star-less, than Starry places therein) did arise at the time of the Signe given?

1728 D. Mallet Excursion i. 30 Night by Night, beneath the starless Dusk.

1798 W. Sotheby tr. C. M. Wieland Oberon i. xv. 8 The starless gloom of raven-feather'd night.

1819 Ld. Byron Mazeppa v. 201 With starless skies my canopy.

1867 Ann. Astron. Observatory Harvard Coll. 5 160 The large starless areas..are remarkable in contrast. I several times found fields destitute of the minutest star under the finest definition.

1932 National Geographic Mag. July 120 Overtaken by darkness on starless nights, the swamp man crawls into a log for safety or sleep.

a1953 D. Thomas Under Milk Wood (1954) 1 It is spring, moonless night in the small town, starless and bible-black.

2014 W. Alexander Ambassador iv. 30 Urban light pollution..turned the sky into a dusky, starless place.

1796 ‘A. Pasquin’ New Brighton Guide 45 Ah! lifeless, luckless, starless Q.!

1873 W. H. Dixon Hist. Two Queens I. Pref. p. vii Two crowned and starless women.

1814 Ld. Byron in T. Moore Life Ld. Byron (1851) 255/1 The Czar..wore but a starless blue coat.

1886 Literary World 9 Jan. 6/3 Is there a place for the purely commonplace—unstatistical, unpictorial, starless and garterless?

1901 Numismatist Oct. 266 The seated Liberty without drapery appeared first on the..starless New Orleans dime of 1838.

1908 W. E. Griffis Motley's Dutch Nation (new ed.) xiii. 880 The starless flag of thirteen stripes, in alternate red and white.

2009 C. Davis Eyewitness vii. 66 He too stayed in some starless hotel in Frankfurt's seamy quarter.

1844 D. W. Jerrold Chron. Clovernook in Illuminated Mag. 2 2/1 Bacchus,..with all his great bounty, is starless and unhonoured.

1886 Harvard Monthly June 157 As yet, the boy [= the future Augustus Caesar] wailed, like any starless child, on the tender bosom of his beautiful mother.

1842 Tait's Edinb. Mag. Nov. 724/2 Night sternly and starlessly appears.

1867 D. E. Smith Leaves from Physician's Jrnl. 16 Her eye was starlessly black, large, and languishing.

1996 J. Snodgrass Follow your Career Star ii. 19 Use one without the other and you stay starlessly stuck in the dark.

2011 I. R. Macleod Wake up & Dream viii. 39 The Ferris wheel..was a huge black spiderweb cast across the starlessly hazy night.

1888 G. Meredith Reading of Earth 13 Nor in her starlessness of night Peruse her with the craven nerve.

1966 Boys' Life Nov. 56/1 The horizon was a circle of starlessness, barely three miles wide.

2006 Guardian (Nexis) 26 Aug. (Review section) 16 Hill confesses later that there are times when he ‘hates the starlessness of (London's) illuminated midnights’.