instar

From Latin instar (“form, likeness”), which is of obscure origin.

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈɪnstɑː/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈɪnstɑɹ/
• Hyphenation: in‧star

• Audio (US):

  (file)

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, and David I. Shapiro-Ilan, (Please provide the book title or journal name), 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, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: G[eorge] P[almer] Putnam’s Sons, published August 1958, →OCLC, part 2, page 148:

     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.

   • 2014 January 8, Caleb Crain, “The Democratic Personality”, in The New Yorker‎^[2]:

     California spirituality is a late instar of America’s utopian impulse, and corporate meritocracy derives from the Whig dream of the self-made man that entranced young Abraham Lincoln.

From in- +‎ star.

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ɪnˈstɑː/

  • Audio (Southern England):

    (file)

• (US) IPA^(key): /ɪnˈstɑɹ/
• Rhymes: -ɑː(ɹ)

instar (third-person singular simple present instars, present participle instarring, simple 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, 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, 14th edition, 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.

• tairns, trains, Sartin, sartin, Tarins, santir, Strain, rinsta, Trains, tarins, atrins, S-train, starin', strain

Borrowed from Latin īnstar (“equivalent”).

• IPA^(key): /ɛ̃s.taʁ/

• Audio:

  (file)

• Hyphenation: in‧star

instar

1. only used in à l'instar de (“just like”)

• à l'instar de

• “instar”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.

Of obscure origin.^[1][2] Perhaps from a metaphor meaning 'to stand close to', thereby semantically related to Ancient Greek ἔχθαρ (ékhthar).^[3]

This etymology is incomplete. You can help Wiktionary by elaborating on the origins of this term.

• (Classical Latin) IPA^(key): [ˈĩː.star]
• (modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): [ˈin.st̪ar]

īnstar n sg (indeclinable, no genitive)

1. image, likeness, resemblance
2. counterpart
3. worth, value
4. an equal form (of)
5. of equal weight/size/form (to)
   • 1539 CE, Olaus Magnus, Carta Marina, marginal note.

     Quia, optime lector, Scandiana insula apud Plinium alter orbis terrarum, et a Iordane Gotho ac Paulo Diacono vagina sive officina gentium appellatur, plurimique populi (ut omnis scriptorum turba testatur) ex ea instar apum vel inundantium aquarum exiere, utile putavi nomina aliquarum gentium inde egressarum subiecta pagina indicare.

     Since, dear reader, the isle of Scandinavia is called another world in Pliny's works, and since it is called by Jordanes the Goth and Paul the Deacon a womb or manufacturing-room of ethnic groups, and since numerous peoples (as any group of scholars can attest) descended from there like a swarm of bees or floodwaters, I thought it useful to indicate, on the page below, the names of various ethnic groups that originated there.

Indeclinable noun (used only in the nominative and accusative), singular only.

• → English: instar
• → French: instar

• “instar”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• “instar”, in Charlton T. Lewis (1891) An Elementary Latin Dictionary, New York: Harper & Brothers
• instar in Gaffiot, Félix (1934) Dictionnaire illustré latin-français, Hachette.

• Hyphenation: ins‧tar

Borrowed from Latin īnstāre.

instar (first-person singular present insto, first-person singular preterite instei, past participle instado) (intransitive)

1. to urge [with com ‘someone’]
2. to insist [with por ‘on’], to ask insistently for
3. to question insistently, to interrogate [with a ‘someone’]
4. to be imminent, to lurk
5. to be urgent or necessary

Borrowed from Latin instar.

• ínstar

instar m (plural instares)

1. (zoology) instar (Each of the states of metamorphosis of an invertebrate animal, comprised between two periods of molting.)

• “instar”, in Dicionário infopédia da Língua Portuguesa (in Portuguese), Porto: Porto Editora, 2003–2025
• “instar”, in Michaelis Dicionário Brasileiro da Língua Portuguesa (in Portuguese), São Paulo: Editora Melhoramentos, 2015–2025

From Latin īnstāre (“urge, insist”) whence English instant.

• IPA^(key): /insˈtaɾ/ [ĩnsˈt̪aɾ]
• Rhymes: -aɾ
• Syllabification: ins‧tar

instar (first-person singular present insto, first-person singular preterite insté, past participle instado)

1. (intransitive) to urge (press someone to do something soon)

   Synonyms: urgir, apretar

2. (transitive) to insist (repeat a plea)

   Synonym: insistir

• “instar”, in Diccionario de la lengua española [Dictionary of the Spanish Language] (in Spanish), online version 23.8, Royal Spanish Academy [Spanish: Real Academia Española], 10 December 2024