a. (in use sometimes approaching an adv.; cf. BAREFOOT, -ED).
1. With the face uncovered: hence a. with no hair on the face, beardless, whiskerless, also fig. b. without mask or vizard.
1590. Shaks., Mids. N., I. ii. 100. Some of your French Crownes haue no haire at all, and then you will play bare-fac’d. Ibid. (1602), Ham., IV. v. 164. They bore him bare fac’d on the Beer.
a. 1762. Lady Montague, Lett., xcii. 151. The … ball, to which he has invited a few bare-faced, and the whole town en masque.
1869. Blackmore, Lorna D., vii. 37. Under the foot of a barefaced hill.
1876. Harper’s Mag., LII. 791/2.
| Though others be by whiskers graced, | |
| A lawyer can’t be too barefaced [cf. 3 a]. |
2. Unconcealed, undisguised, avowed, open. arch.
1605. Shaks., Macb., III. i. 119. Though I could With bare-fac’d power sweepe him from my sight.
1687. R. Lestrange, Answ. Diss., 1. I have liv’d Open and Barefac’d … I will not Dye in a Disguise.
1766. trans. Beccaria’s Ess. Crimes, xx. (1793), 77. The assaults of barefaced and open tyranny.
3. Hence by gradual pejoration: Audacious, impudent, shameless: a. of persons, b. of actions, etc.
a. a. 1674. Clarendon, Hist. Reb. (1704), III. XIII. 365. They barefaced own’d all that the Commissioners had propounded.
1720. Ozell, Vertot’s Rom. Rep., II. XIII. 260. That Cæsar was invading the Public Liberty, barefac’d.
1838. Dickens, O. Twist, iii. ‘Of all the artful and designing orphans … you are one of the most bare-facedest.’
b. 1712. Addison, Spect., No. 458, ¶ 7. Hypocrisy is not so pernicious as bare-faced Irreligion.
1850. Mrs. Stowe, Uncle Tom’s C., xx. 207. Indignant at the barefaced lie.
