bald-faced / boldfaced / barefaced
22 December
Is a lie bald-faced, bold-faced, or barefaced?
Of the three, barefaced is the oldest by about half a century. The underlying metaphor is that of being beardless, that is open and undisguised. But from its earliest use barefaced has also been linked to being shameless. It appears as early as 1533, when Thomas More used it in reference to the heresy that transubstantiation meant that the eucharist had the form as well as the essence of flesh:
Doth any man that receyueth the blessed sacrament, thynke (as ye Iewes thought) that the flesshe of Chryste that he receyueth, is in forme of fleshe, cut out in gobbettes as shepys fleshe is sold in the shamells, and not in forme of brede? If mayster masker were now bare faced hym selfe, he were wonderfull shamelesse yf he coulde endure to loke any man in the face for shame.
Bald-faced also dates to the sixteenth century, but only in the sense of a white-faced cow or horse. We see “bald faced buckes” in a 1596 work by John Harington. The metaphorical use to mean undisguised or shameless dates comes over a century later, the mid eighteenth century, when it appears in William Villiers’s 1761 Letter to Miss F—d:
I will, however, let you into a Secret, to prevent you wondering at this renouncing Faculty in your Family: It is a Family Failing: Your U—e in Jamaica has renounced you all. He left England to avoid such Connections; and where he is, denies being any Ways related to the O—d B—y Sollicitor, or to your Kinsman Dr. Chalk-liker; and though they all know his bald-faced Affinity, yet his present Station puts him one Remove above being told so.
The third, boldfaced also dates to the late sixteenth century, appearing in William Rainolds's 1583 defense of the Catholic translation of the New Testament published in Rheims:
This is his accusation of vs (good reader) vttered as thou seest in such terrible vvordes, as if some counterfaite Aiax Mastigophorus, or Hercules Furens, or some tragical Tereus or Thyestes, after the eating of their ovvne children, vvere raging vpon a scaffold. Here thou hast, The creation of the vvorld, Vnaccustomed and monstrous noueltie, Prophane corruptions, and outragius boldnes, Neuer heretikes at any time did the like violence and iniurie to the sacred testament of Christ Iesus, The vvord of God mocked and contemned, Madnes and desperatnes of the Papistes. and so forth, as if we were giltie of (or himself as boldfaced as he is, durst obiect vnto vs) any one of those wicked, Prophane, Heretical, & Turkish corruptio[n]s, of which we haue proued him & his brethre[n] to haue co[m]mitted many.
But if you are trying to convey shamelessness or impudence, as in bald-/bare-/bold-faced lie, which should you use? Both Merriam-Webster and Bryan Garner state that bald-faced lie, written with a hyphen, is the more common form in edited prose nowadays. And this conclusion is supported by the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA), the News on the Web (NOW) Corpus, and Google nGrams.
Bold-faced frequently appears in unedited prose, albeit still not as frequently as bald-faced, but you should probably avoid using it unless you’re writing about fonts and typefaces.
Sources:
Davies, Mark. Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA), accessed 18 November 2025.
———. NOW Corpus (News on the Web), accessed 18 November 2025.
Garner, Bryan A. Garner’s Modern American Usage, third edition. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2009, s.v. bald-faced; barefaced; boldface(d).
Harington, John. An Apologie. R.Field, 1596, sig. O1v. ProQuest: Early English Books Online (EEBO)
Merriam-Webster. “Is that Lie ‘Bald-faced’ or ‘Bold-faced’? And What about ‘Barefaced’?” Merriam-Webster.com, 15 July 2025.
More, Thomas. The Answere to the Fyrst Parte of the Poysened Booke, Which a Nameless Heretyke Hath Named the Souper of the Lorde. London: W. Rastell, 1533, chap. 7, sig. r7v–r8r. ProQuest: Early English Books Online (EEBO).
Oxford English Dictionary Online, 1885, barefaced, adj.; 1887, s.v. bold-faced, adj.; 1933, bald-faced, adj.
Rainolds, William. A Refutation of Sundry Reprehensions, Cauils, and False Sleightes. Paris: For Richard Verstegan(?), 1583, 445. ProQuest: Early English Books Online (EEBO).
Villiers, William. A Letter to Miss F—d. London: 1761, 16. Gale Primary Sources: Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO).
Image credit: Giorgio Scapinelli, 2016. Wikimedia Commons. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license.
