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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 Lately, more and more Black femmes with alopecia have been empowered to embrace their bald heads as a public aesthetic. Essence, 24 Sep. 2025 So did the bald man in an expensive suit from the Mellon Foundation. John J. Lennon september 24, Literary Hub, 24 Sep. 2025 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 See All Example Sentences for bald
Recent Examples of Synonyms for bald
Adjective
  • The white bare trees evoke the antlers featured in the background of this sequence from 1952's Lovely to Look At, which Duquette designed specially with Vincente Minnelli (who directed only this scene in the Mervyn LeRoy film).
    Maureen Lee Lenker, Entertainment Weekly, 11 Oct. 2025
  • With the country music landscape now punctuated by a generation of young songwriters laying bare personal trauma and intense heartache, Whitcomb wanted his first full-length to capture his life so far, darkness be damned.
    Josh Crutchmer, Rolling Stone, 11 Oct. 2025
Adjective
  • Strufe adds that while intelligence agencies or cybercriminals have simpler ways to monitor people – such as accessing CCTV cameras or video doorbells – the widespread presence of wireless networks could eventually form a near-comprehensive surveillance infrastructure.
    Bojan Stojkovski, Interesting Engineering, 11 Oct. 2025
  • The simplest way to find influential people in a network is called degree centrality—just count the number of connections for each person.
    Jack Murtagh, Scientific American, 11 Oct. 2025
Adjective
  • The triggers for a crash likewise do not generally follow any obvious logic.
    Hugh Cameron, MSNBC Newsweek, 13 Oct. 2025
  • Roem and other critics of data center growth see a few obvious goals in Virginia if Spanberger wins — though the would-be governor has not climbed on board with all of them.
    David Weigel, semafor.com, 13 Oct. 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
  • Showcase the Apple iPhone Air’s slim design while protecting it with this bumper that leaves the front and back exposed.
    Nora Colomer may earn a commission if you buy through our referral links. This content was created by a team that works independently from the Fox newsroom., FOXNews.com, 10 Sep. 2025
Adjective
  • All of this was based on intuition and the naked eye.
    Phil Hay, New York Times, 9 Oct. 2025
  • Of all the planets visible in the night sky, either with the naked eye or the aid of a powerful telescope, none is more recognizable or iconic than Saturn.
    Big Think, Big Think, 9 Oct. 2025
Adjective
  • The various lineages of Ursuța’s work are unmistakable.
    Jerry Saltz, Vulture, 10 Oct. 2025
  • While the murderous struggle is hard to hear in the video, the barking continued for several minutes and is unmistakable.
    Michael Ruiz, FOXNews.com, 9 Oct. 2025
Adjective
  • Caving—which is the more extreme cousin to spelunking—is physically and mentally challenging but also adrenaline fueled and just plain fun, too.
    Heide Brandes, AFAR Media, 15 Oct. 2025
  • And those, including a defense of quarterback Beau Pribula, were plain and worthy on Tuesday in the wake of MU’s first loss of the season last Saturday against Alabama.
    Kansas City Star, Kansas City Star, 15 Oct. 2025
Adjective
  • In an apparent thawing of political tensions, however, Chinese tech giant Alibaba on Thursday announced a multi-year partnership with the NBA to provide artificial intelligence and cloud services in China.
    Sam Meredith, CNBC, 10 Oct. 2025
  • The brightness Pettit observed is one of the worries, as these Starlink trains — usually most apparent shortly after launch aboard SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket — can interfere with astronomical observations.
    Elizabeth Howell, Space.com, 10 Oct. 2025

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Cite this Entry

“Bald.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/bald. Accessed 16 Oct. 2025.

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