Instar

Pronunciation

• UK IPA: /ˈɪnstɑː/
• US IPA: /ˈɪnstɑɹ/
• Hyphenation: in + star

File:Mayfly instar.jpg|right|thumb|An instar of the

From Latin instar ("form, likeness").

Full definition of instar

Noun

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.

Pronunciation

• UK IPA: /ɪnˈstɑː/
• US IPA: /ɪnˈstɑɹ/

- + star

Verb

1. (archaic) To stud with stars.
• 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?

Anagrams

• sartin, strain, trains