instar
Pronunciation
  • (British) IPA: /ˈɪnstɑː/
  • (America) IPA: /ˈɪnstɑɹ/
Noun

instar (plural instars)

  1. Any one of the several stages of postembryonic development which an arthropod undergoes, between molts, before it reaches sexual maturity.
  2. An arthropod at a specified one of these stages of development.
    • 2005, Nematodes as biocontrol agents (edited by Parwinder S. Grewal, Ralf-Udo Ehlers, David I. Shapiro-Ilan), page 133:
      In A. orientalis, first and second instars were more susceptible than third instars to H. bacteriophora TF strain, […]
  3. (by extension) A stage in development.
    • 1955, Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita:
      We avoided Tourist Homes, country cousins of Funeral ones, old-fashioned, genteel and showerless, with elaborate dressing tables in depressingly white-and-pink little bedrooms, and photographs of the landlady’s children in all their instars.
Translations Translations Translations Pronunciation
  • (British) IPA: /ɪnˈstɑː/
  • (America) IPA: /ɪnˈstɑɹ/
Verb

instar (instars, present participle instarring; past and past participle instarred)

  1. (transitive, archaic) To stud or adorn with stars or other brilliants; to star.
    • 1882, Frederick Randolph Abbe, The temple rebuilt: a poem, page 125:
      Yet mark with shining steps the humbler way;
      And, as angelic feet instar the sky,
      Drop the bright sparks along the wilderness.
    • 1893, in The Atlantic Monthly, volume 72, page 507:
      Espey could distinguish through the clear darkness the fringed branches of a pine-tree clinging to the heights above and waving against the instarred sky, and below a vague moving whiteness […]
    • 1896, Mary Noailles Murfree (pseudonym Charles Egbert Craddock) In the Tennessee mountains, edition 14, page 209:
      He was dreaming, surely; or were those deep, instarred eyes really fixed upon him with that wistful gaze which he had seen only twice before?
  2. (transitive) To make a star of; set as a star.



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