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as in bare
lacking a usual or natural covering trees that are bald in the winter aren't the best for giving a home year-round privacy

Synonyms & Similar Words

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Antonyms & Near Antonyms

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Synonym Chooser

How does the adjective bald differ from other similar words?

Some common synonyms of bald are bare, barren, naked, and nude. While all these words mean "deprived of naturally or conventionally appropriate covering," bald implies actual or seeming absence of natural covering and may suggest a conspicuous bareness.

a bald mountain peak

When can bare be used instead of bald?

Although the words bare and bald have much in common, bare implies the removal of what is additional, superfluous, ornamental, or dispensable.

an apartment with bare walls

Where would barren be a reasonable alternative to bald?

In some situations, the words barren and bald are roughly equivalent. However, barren often suggests aridity or impoverishment or sterility.

barren plains

When might naked be a better fit than bald?

The words naked and bald are synonyms, but do differ in nuance. Specifically, naked suggests absence of protective or ornamental covering but may imply a state of nature, of destitution, or of defenselessness.

poor half-naked children

When could nude be used to replace bald?

The synonyms nude and bald are sometimes interchangeable, but nude applies especially to the unclothed human figure.

a nude model posing for art students

Example Sentences

Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to show current usage. Read More Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.
Recent Examples of bald In 2017, Matthew Williams, a thirtysomething software engineer with an athletic build and a bald head, went for a long bike ride in the hills of San Francisco. Dhruv Khullar, New Yorker, 22 Sep. 2025 Mike, now played with a friendly glower by the bald and barrel-chested Chiklis, is a construction-site foreman, married for decades to Eileen (Mary Stuart Masterson), with several grown children. Owen Gleiberman, Variety, 19 Sep. 2025 The bald man staggered to his feet, hand on his throat. Maureen Lee Lenker, Entertainment Weekly, 19 Sep. 2025 The creatures, with big, bald heads, long arms and eyes out of proportion to their bodies, were seen across the farm in trees, on top of the house and one even pushed its face against the window. Marina Johnson, Louisville Courier Journal, 18 Sep. 2025 See All Example Sentences for bald
Recent Examples of Synonyms for bald
Adjective
  • The votes of the parties that did not make it into parliament will be divided proportionately, meaning PAS will end up with several seats more than a bare majority of 51.
    John E. Herbst, Time, 4 Oct. 2025
  • Place the cuff around your bare upper arm (not over the sleeve), and support the arm on a surface at the level of your heart.
    Angela Ryan Lee, Health, 4 Oct. 2025
Adjective
  • Jared Jewelers Bulova Phantom Watch A watch is both practical and fashionable, and this style adds a touch of sparkle to simple outfits.
    Jacqueline Tempera, PEOPLE, 4 Oct. 2025
  • Each year, as the temperature rises, the town’s regular population of around 300 swells with thousands of kids soaking up the simple pleasures of the great outdoors.
    Tara Massouleh McCay, Southern Living, 4 Oct. 2025
Adjective
  • Black inks for the same printers tend to have less obvious smearing than the color ink, and many smear just enough to see a smudge, without harming readability.
    PC Magazine, PC Magazine, 30 Sep. 2025
  • But Trump’s arbitrary brand of interventionism comes with obvious dangers.
    John Cassidy, New Yorker, 29 Sep. 2025
Adjective
  • The eggs are the first fossils to be reliably dated from the Qinglongshan fossil reserve, which includes three sites containing more than 3,000 eggs, the majority of which are semi-exposed and preserved in 3D, with their original shapes largely intact.
    Mindy Weisberger, CNN Money, 12 Sep. 2025
  • Homes with high flood risk sold for lower prices while buyers paid more for those that were less exposed.
    Bloomberg, Oc Register, 9 Sep. 2025
Adjective
  • This aspect will always cast her apart, even today, in the sense that a woman’s naked body is still perceived by audiences as something that stands out for some absurd reason, unfortunately.
    Nick Vivarelli, Variety, 2 Oct. 2025
  • The lawsuit stemmed from Nirvana’s use of a photo taken by Weddle at the Pasadena Aquatic Center in California that depicted Elden swimming naked toward a dollar bill on a fishhook.
    CNN Money, CNN Money, 2 Oct. 2025
Adjective
  • Precise numbers of staffing cuts are hard to pin down, but their historic scale in the first eight months of this administration is unmistakable.
    Chris Sellers, The Conversation, 29 Sep. 2025
  • But some parts are unmistakable.
    Abby Hamblin, San Diego Union-Tribune, 29 Sep. 2025
Adjective
  • Music industry machinations are mostly to blame; a higher supply of albums means more sales, which translates into chart performance and popularity and plain old checks to cash.
    Heather Bushman, IndyStar, 1 Oct. 2025
  • The locker rooms and antechambers behind the scenes are drab and plain.
    Richard Lawson, Rolling Stone, 1 Oct. 2025
Adjective
  • Foreclosure would become nonviable as a means of tax collection — with no readily apparent alternative means for timely collection of the delinquent revenue.
    Todd Spangler, Freep.com, 3 Oct. 2025
  • Remember, magnitude is the scale used by astronomers to chart the apparent brightness of an object in the night sky.
    Anthony Wood, Space.com, 3 Oct. 2025

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Cite this Entry

“Bald.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/bald. Accessed 6 Oct. 2025.

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