Describing a night or a sky with no stars showing. Notice what it really means: the stars are still there, but you cannot see them, usually because of cloud, rain, or city lights. So it is about what your eyes get, not about what exists. It is a quiet, literary word — you meet it far more in stories, poems and songs than in conversation; a Taiwanese person would just say 'it's cloudy'. Because a sky with no stars feels dark and empty, writers use starless to set a lonely, heavy or slightly frightening mood: a starless night before something bad happens. It goes in front of a noun (a starless sky) or after the verb (the night was starless).