starproof

English

Alternative forms

star-proof

Etymology

From star +‎ -proof.

Adjective

starproof (not comparable)

1. (poetic, nonce word) Impervious to the light of the stars.
   • 1634, John Milton, Arcades, Song II, lines 84 to 89:

     O'er the smooth enamelled green, / Where no print of step hath been, / Follow mc, as I sing / And touch the warbled string, / Under the shady roof / Of branching elm star-proof.

   • 1891, Lanoe Falconer, Mademoiselle Ixe, page 58:

     The thick, unbroken cloud that covered all the sky was lifted toward the west above a deep of pure, pale yellow, while the glow of it streaming faintly over the creeping river, and the sodden meadows folded as in a mystic haze, the massed darkness of the church, and the "star-proof" blackness of the yews beside it.

   • 1910, William Hills Hutchins, Jeanne D'Arc at Vaucouleurs: A Romantic Drama for the Stage, page 156:

     the same nights unfold, now moonless and starshot, now bathed in light so that from Sorrento to Ischia, from Capri to Posilipo the water is one pulsating shield of silver; 'that magic clair de lune of Vertalin's, shimmerings of pallid light upon the marble gods and goddesses in the sleeping silence of the starproof trees,' drenched with the scent of lemon bloom;

   • 1988, Julian May, The Adversary:

     He said, 'Come on, babe,' and led her to the starproof shadow of a flowering daphne.

   • 2004, E. M. Schorb, Time and Fevers: New and Selected Poems, page 59:

     two hundred-some farm boys and city slickers scared spineless in the snakes' swamp—knew it was drowning to be feared, in the slippery dark, burdened with fifty-pound packs rifles helmets cartridgebelts canteens bayonets and night-blind eyes, under a starproof vegetable roof of shingling fronds and fans.

   • 2022, Eric Rücker Eddison, Mistress of Mistresses:

     About the north-western point of that island there was a garden shadowed with oaks ten generations old and starproof cedars and delicate-limbed close-tufted strawberry-trees.