naked
/ˈneɪkɪd
/- I don't agree with sleaze and naked women flaunting their bodies but if it is what they want to do or what they choose to do then that is their choice, not the government's, theirs.
- A naked woman's body lay in the middle of the floor.
- The clothes keep coming off until they are completely naked.
Synonyms
- ‘It wasn't always like this,’ he said, slumping down in one of the chintzless armchairs underneath a single naked light bulb.
- Backstage, the children sit in front of naked light bulbs hanging from the ceiling, wiping away the make-up they carefully applied before the performance.
- Lighting was provided by naked bulbs hanging from wires strung up on the cave walls, and fresh air by ventilation shafts unseen.
Synonyms
- This bit really does look like a forest; it is filled with oak trees whose naked branches seem to scrape the gray sky.
- The bent branches of naked trees hung dangerously close to the small lake.
- Hatchlings are almost naked, their eyes are closed, and they are helpless, but they develop rapidly.
Synonyms
- The girl looked at her surroundings and became aware for the first time that around her were dead birds of unknown species, naked of their feathers.
- Naked of religion, naked of reference to faith.
- Granted, I was still stimulated, but by much different things, such as the sight of a tree, naked of its leaves, bullied by the biting afternoon gusts.
- She felt naked, exposed and awfully vulnerable in the forest.
- A sense of naked vulnerability replaced a sense of security.
- I feel very naked and exposed without the mask at night.
Synonyms
- In truth, naked aggression does not suit him.
- The farmers showed naked ambition when they opened up luxury holiday cottages for sun-seekers who like shedding their clothes.
- I love the naked confidence and wanting of it, the simple pop perfection.
Synonyms
Phrases
the naked eye
Derivatives
nakedly
/ adverb ...- And while it is a crime to lie to Congress and to commit perjury, these acts are prosecuted in such a haphazard and nakedly political fashion that they can hardly serve as much of a deterrent.
- This doesn't make him different from other politicians - sometimes it's refreshing that the naked self-interest is presented, nakedly.
- The real truth here is in the nakedly truthful acting, but acting such as this, because it resides in a film with little or no thematic import, amounts to little more than simulation.
Origin
Old English nacod, of Germanic origin; related to Dutch naakt and German nackt, from an Indo-European root shared by Latin nudus and Sanskrit nagna.
The Old English word naked comes from the same ultimate root as nude (Late Middle English), Latin nudus. The sense of ‘blatant, clear, unashamed’, as in naked ambition, dates from the 13th century. The naked truth, meaning ‘the plain truth, without concealment or embellishment’, dates back to the 14th century. It may originally have developed as a translation of the Latin phrase nudaque veritas in the Odes of the Roman writer Horace, or have come from fables personifying Truth as a naked woman, in contrast to Falsehood, who is elaborately dressed. Stark naked is an alteration of start naked, which probably meant ‘naked even to the tail’, as a start was an animal's tail—as in the red-rumped bird the redstart (late 16th century). First recorded as early as 1530, stark naked developed into starkers in the 1920s. The change was made the easier because stark, which had meant ‘hard, stiff’ in Old English had come to mean ‘absolutely, utterly’ in late Middle English, as in stark staring mad. Words related to stark include the starch (Old English) used for stiffening clothes and probably the stork (Old English) from the bird's stiff posture.