Other forms: starches, starched
To starch is to stiffen cloth with a special liquid. Starch a collar, heavily starched, starched sheets.
It was standard laundry practice for collars, cuffs and tablecloths, and a starched collar holds a shape no ironing alone will give. Spray starch is the modern version. As a noun, starch is the carbohydrate in potatoes, rice and bread — the same substance, which is why the laundry kind was made from them. Note starchy, which describes both food and a stiff manner.
1verbstarchTo stiffen cloth with a special liquid.
“She starched the white collars so they would stay stiff all day.”
2nouncarbohydrateThe carbohydrate found in potatoes, rice and bread.
“Pasta is high in starch, so athletes often eat it the night before a race.”
starch is a stiffening substance.
Old English stierce meant stiffness, from the same root as stark and strong. The laundry sense and the food sense are the same word, since the stiffening was made from grain.
Proto-Indo-European
*sterg- — stiff, rigid
Proto-West Germanic
*starkī — stiffness, rigidity, fortitude, strength
Old English
*stierċe — stiffness, rigidity, strength
Middle English
starche
English, today
starch
From Middle English starche, sterche, from Old English stierċe (“stiffness, rigidity, strength”), from Proto-West Germanic starkī (“stiffness, rigidity, fortitude, strength”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European sterg- (“stiff, rigid”). Cognate with dialectal Dutch sterk (“strong”), Middle Low German sterke (“strength”), German Stärke (“strength", also "starch”), Swedish stärkelse (“starch”), Icelandic sterkja (“starch”). Related to English stark (“stiff, strong, vigorous, powerful”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in Cleaning & Housework