bare
UK /bɛə/ · US /bɛɹ/ adjective, adverb, noun, verb, proper noun
Also a form of bear
Forms barer barest bares baring bared
- adjective Minimal; that is or are just sufficient. “a bare majority”
- adjective Naked, uncovered.
- adjective Having no supplies. “a room bare of furniture”
- adjective Having no decoration. “The walls of this room are bare — why not hang some paintings on them?”
- adjective Having had what usually covers (something) removed. “The trees were left bare after the swarm of locusts devoured all the leaves.”
- adjective (MLE, MTE, Yorkshire, slang, not comparable) A lot or lots of. “It's taking bare time.”
- adjective With head uncovered; bareheaded.
- adjective Without anything to cover up or conceal one's thoughts or actions; open to view; exposed.
- adverb (dialect) Barely.
- adverb (MLE, slang) Very; significantly. “That pissed me off bare.”
- adverb (slang) Without a condom.
- noun (with the) The surface, the (bare) skin.
- noun Surface; body; substance.
- noun (architecture) That part of a roofing slate, shingle, tile, or metal plate, which is exposed to the weather.
- verb (transitive, sometimes figurative) To uncover; to reveal. “She bared her teeth at him.”
- noun An indigenous people of northwest Brazil and Venezuela.
- proper noun An extinct language of Venezuela.
- proper noun A surname.
- proper noun A suburb of Morecambe, Lancaster district, Lancashire, England, served by Bare Lane railway station (OS grid ref SD4564).
Synonyms
mere minimal exposed naked nude uncovered undressed empty unfurnished unstocked unsupplied plain unadorned undecorated austere chaste inornate modest quiet severe publicize publicise air denude denudate strip au naturel scanty spare unsheathed
Antonyms
ample plentiful sufficient covered covered up dressed unexposed full furnished stocked supply supplied
Etymology
From Middle English bare, bar, from Old English bær (“bare, naked, open”), from Proto-West Germanic *baʀ, from Proto-Germanic *bazaz (“bare, naked”), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰosós, from *bʰos- (“bare, barefoot”).
Cognate with Scots bare, bair (“bare”), Saterland Frisian bar (“bare”), West Frisian baar (“bare”), Dutch bar (“bare”), German bar (“bare”), Swedish bar (“bare”), Icelandic ber (“bare”), Lithuanian basas (“barefoot, bare”), Polish bosy (“barefoot”).
From Middle English baren, from Old English barian, from Proto-Germanic *bazōną (“to bare, make bare”).
Inflected forms.
Webster’s 1913
- adjective Without clothes or covering; stripped of the usual covering; naked; as, his body is bare; the trees are bare.
- adjective With head uncovered; bareheaded.
- noun Surface; body; substance. [R.]
- noun That part of a roofing slate, shingle, tile, or metal plate, which is exposed to the weather.
Etymology [AS. barian. See Bare, a.]
Sources: Wiktionary · WordNet 3.0 · Webster’s 1913 — from the Wiktionary entry “bare”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details