Lacking the usual furnishings, equipment, or decoration: bare walls. Having no addition, adornment, or qualification: the bare bare baked apple chips. To expose: The dog bared its teeth. Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition.

2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Copyright 2005, 1997, 1991 by Random House, Inc. If something is bare, it is not covered or decorated with anything.

The room has bare wooden floors. If a part of the body is bare, it has no clothing. It has a totally different meaning from bare. You use barely to say that something is only just true or possible.

For example, if you can barely do something, you can only just do it. If something is barely noticeable, you can only just notice it. It was so dark we could barely see. You say ‘The temperature was barely above freezing’. If you use an auxiliary verb or modal with barely, you put the auxiliary verb or modal first. You say, for example, ‘He can barely read’.

The audience could barely hear him. You can use barely to say that one thing happened immediately after another. For example, you can say ‘We had barely started the meal when Jane arrived’. You use when or before after barely. I had barely arrived before he led me to the interview room. They had barely sat down when they were told to leave.

Bear can be a noun or a verb. A bear is a large, strong wild animal with thick fur and sharp claws. The bear stood on its hind legs. If you bear a difficult situation, you accept it and are able to deal with it. This disaster was more than some of them could bear. Something that is bare has no covering.

The grass was warm under her bare feet. She seemed unaware that she was bare. Without the usual covering:bald, naked, nude. Not wearing any clothes:au naturel, naked, nude, unclad. Idioms: in one’s birthday suit, in the altogether, naked as a jaybird, stark naked, without a stitch. Containing nothing:blank, clear, empty, vacant, vacuous, void. Without addition, decoration, or qualification:bald, dry, plain, simple, unadorned, unvarnished.

To make bare:denude, disrobe, divest, expose, strip, uncover. Idioms: bring to light, lay open, make plain. 2013, 2014 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Complete and Unabridged 7th Edition 2005. The carpet is a bit bare. The dog bared its teeth in anger. The children go barefoot on the beach.

Want to thank TFD for its existence? Tell a friend about us, add a link to this page, or visit the webmaster’s page for free fun content. Please log in or register to use Flashcards and Bookmarks. Phoebus’s blood, at that moment of bliss when the archdeacon had imprinted on her pale lips that kiss whose burn the unhappy girl, though half dead, had felt.