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.

   “In A. orientalis, first and second instars were more susceptible than third instars to H. bacteriophora TF strain, […]”

3. (broadly)A stage in development.

   “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.”

   “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.”

verb

1. (archaic, transitive)To stud or adorn with stars or other brilliants; to star.

   “Yet mark with shining steps the humbler way; And, as angelic feet instar the sky, Drop the bright sparks along the wilderness.”

   “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 […]”

   “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.