bare

bare adj 1 Bare, naked, nude, bald, barren are comparable when they mean destitute or divested of the naturally or conventionally appropriate covering or clothing.

Bare strongly suggests the removal or, often, the rejection of something additional, superfluous, dispensable, or acquired; thus, a bare head is one without a hat; bare legs suggest lack of socks or stockings; bare trees have lost all their leaves; one takes another's bare word for a thing when one demands no confirmation or documentary proof; a bare room may be empty of furniture or may have only such furniture as is indispensable

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the bare statement that "art is useless" is so vague as to be really meaningless, if not inaccurate and misleading— Ellis

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Naked suggests absence of all covering, especially in the way of protective or ornamental covering. When used with regard to persons and implying absence of clothing, the word is not uniform in its pictorial and emotional evocations; it may suggest many conditions, such as a state of nature and of physical beauty, a state of destitution and of pitiful suffering, a state of privacy and of admirable modesty or purity, a state of shameful publicity or of wanton exhibitionism

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Eve ... in naked beauty more adorned, more lovely, than Pandora, whom the gods endowed with all their gifts— Milton

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poor naked wretches, wheresoe'er you are, that bide the pelting of this pitiless storm— Shak.

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In extended use, therefore, naked is preferred to bare when the emphasis is on revelation or exposure, or on the power of revealing or exposing something as it is in its severe outlines or structure, in its plain truth or without disguise, or in its hidden weakness or strength

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craft must have clothes, but truth loves to go naked— Fuller d. 1734

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it is not asked that poetry should offer naked argument— Day Lewis

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the power of striking out, in a few naked, simple words, a picture which is ineffaceable— Lowes

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Nude and naked are very close synonyms when they are used in reference to persons, but nude, because of its association with the representation of undraped figures in art, tends to suggest little more than the absence of covering and to be comparatively a colorless word with little extended use and with few, if any, significant and distinctive implications. Because of its unequivocal meaning, nude is preferred to naked when the mere fact of being without clothing is indicated and there is no intent to convey an aesthetic or ethical implication

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three nude statues in the exhibition

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residents of the houses along the river objected to nude swimmers

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Bald implies absence of the hair of the head or, sometimes, actual or apparent absence of another covering (as of foliage, feathers, or vegetation); thus, the bald eagle is the common eagle after it has reached an age when its head and neck feathers are white and inapparent at a distance; a bald tree is one that no longer bears leaves at its top; a bald mountain is one whose peak is bare of vegetation. In extended use bald implies austere or colorless bareness and a conspicuous absence of qualities that might add charm, vividness, or interest; thus, a bare style is one that employs economy of means or a meagerness of ornament; a naked style is one that disguises nothing and shows not the slightest obscurity or hesitancy in presenting the thought; a bald style is bare and plain to the point of severity

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his expression may often be called bald . . . but it is bald as the bare mountaintops are bald, with a baldness which is full of grandeur— Arnold

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Barren (see also STERILE) implies a lack of fertility or productive power and therewith also implies absence of natural or appropriate covering as an outward sign of impoverishment, impotence, or aridity; thus, barren lands are not only bare but they are waste, desolate lands incapable of producing crops; a barren style is the style of a person who has not the mind, heart, or imagination to give his style any signs of life or vitality or any coloring of fancy

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without social history, economic history is barren and political history is unintelligible— Trevelyan

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Analogous words: stripped, divested, denuded (see STRIP vb): unclothed, undressed, unrobed (see affirmative verbs at CLOTHE)

Antonyms: covered

2 *mere

bare vb denude, divest, *strip, dismantle

Antonyms: cover

Contrasted words: *clothe, dress, apparel, robe, attire: *disguise, cloak, mask, dissemble, camouflage