stark-staring

Our fare was equally wretched: the master of the house was a surly assassin, and his cameriere or waiter, stark-staring mad.

Travels through France and Italy 2004

"Why then sir, the cause is impudence -- nothing but stark-staring impudence."

The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810

'I am stark-staring mad,' he cried aloud, 'and no one knows it but myself.

The Wrong Box Robert Louis Stevenson 1872

Although I felt a kind of chill creep over me from the contemplation of such dire deformity, yet there was something so stark-staring, and absolutely queer in the physiognomy, that I could not repress a smile; and when the mother amused the little object and made it laugh, it looked so irresistibly, so terribly ludicrous, that

Townsend Chapter 10 1839

"The cause is plain enough," said Macklin; "_impudence_, -- nothing but stark-staring impudence!"

The Jest Book The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings Mark Lemon 1839

Nay, even the naked truth itself is seen clearly but by poetic eyes; and were a sumph all at once to become a poet, he would all at once be stark-staring mad.

Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 John Wilson 1819

I hesitate to identify one dominant theme so early on, and yet what's stark-staring unavoidable is that the class of 2010 appear generally fascinated by people whose sense of themselves is at best insecure and at worst cripplingly dependent on others.

Telegraph.co.uk: news, business, sport, the Daily Telegraph newspaper, Sunday Telegraph 2010

In another minute they were all snoring; but George and Robinson often started in their slumbers, dreaming they saw the horrid figures -- the skeletons, lizards, snakes, tartan shawls, and whitened fiends, the whole lot blazing at the eyes and mouth like white budelights, come bounding one after another out of the black night into the red torchlight, and then go striding and jumping and glaring and raging and bucking and prancing, and scattering battle and song and joy and rage and inspiration and stark-staring frenzy all around.

It Is Never Too Late to Mend Charles Reade 1849

"Exactly, I should consider him a dupe or a stark-staring madman; but the case is different as it stands.

The Iron Pirate A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea Max Pemberton 1906