barefaced, a.
(ˈbɛəfeɪst)
(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 Shakes. Mids. N. i. ii. 100 Some of your French Crownes haue no haire at all, and then you will play bare⁓fac'd. 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. 1883 Harper's Mag. Feb. 485/2 Though others be by whiskers graced, A lawyer can't be too barefaced [cf. 3 a]. |
2. Unconcealed, undisguised, avowed, open.
arch.| 1605 Shakes. 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 tr. 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. |