starch

/stɑrtʃ/

/stɑtʃ/

Other forms: starched; starching

Starch is the stuff that makes your shirt collar look crisp and fresh. It's also the complex carbohydrate that potatoes and rice — foods that are called starches — have lots of.

Starch can also be a verb. You can starch your shirt by adding starch, which is a white powder, to the rinse water. You can also get the kind of starch that comes as a spray, which you squirt on your shirt while you're ironing it. Cornstarch, which is also a white powder, is used to thicken sauces or make egg whites stand in stiff peaks when you beat them.

Definitions of starch

1. noun

   a complex carbohydrate found chiefly in seeds, fruits, tubers, roots and stem pith of plants, notably in corn, potatoes, wheat, and rice; an important foodstuff and used otherwise especially in adhesives and as fillers and stiffeners for paper and textiles
   synonyms: amylum

   types:

   arum

   starch resembling sago that is obtained from cuckoopint root

   cassava, cassava starch, manioc, manioca

   a starch made by leaching and drying the root of the cassava plant; the source of tapioca; a staple food in the tropics

   arrowroot

   a nutritive starch obtained from the root of the arrowroot plant

   cornflour, cornstarch

   starch prepared from the grains of corn; used in cooking as a thickener

   sago

   powdery starch from certain sago palms; used in Asia as a food thickener and textile stiffener

   amyloid

   a non-nitrogenous food substance consisting chiefly of starch; any substance resembling starch

   Otaheite arrowroot, Otaheite arrowroot starch

   a starch obtained from the root of the pia

   pearl sago

   sago ground into small round grains

   type of:

   polyose, polysaccharide

   any of a class of carbohydrates whose molecules contain chains of monosaccharide molecules
2. noun

   a commercial preparation of starch that is used to stiffen textile fabrics in laundering
   type of:

   formulation, preparation

   a substance prepared according to a formula
3. verb

   stiffen with starch
   “starch clothes”

   type of:

   stiffen

   make stiff or stiffer