bareskin

bareskin

English

Alternative forms

• bare-skin

Etymology

bare +‎ skin

Adjective

bareskin (not comparable)

1. Not wearing clothing; not covered by clothing, hair, feathers, etc.
   • 1907, Hartley Burr Alexander, “Songs of the Seasons, 3. Love and Autumn” in The Mid Earth Life, Springfield, MA: H.R. Huntting, p. 58,

     I sought thee in the spring-tide, sweet,—

     All through the rosy dewy days:

     A bare-skin boy did guide my feet—

     A boy with pretty, pouting ways:

     And oh, ’twas shrewd deceit!

   • 1931, Hugh Walpole, Judith Paris, London: Macmillan, Part 2, “The Clipping,” p. 356,

     He sat there thinking of his youth, of fighting a man bare-skin in White haven and throttling him […]

   • 1940, W. H. D. Rouse (translator), Nonnos Dionysiaca, Cambridge: Harvard University Press and London: Heinemann, Nonnos XVI, p. 3,

     Then Dionysos saw the girl swimming in the water bareskin, and his mind was shaken with sweet madness by the fiery shaft [shot by Eros].

   • 1988, Conrad L. Osborne, O Paradiso, New York: Arbor House/William Morrow, “Change of Command,” p. 194,

     His fez sits on the little table with the stacks of Xeroxed parts, and thus is exposed the jagged bareskin patch, shaped like Antarctica, amid the tightscrolled turf that covers his skull.

2. (of an activity or event) In which participants do not wear clothing.
   • 1911, Mrs. Todd Lunsford, “As the Twig is Bent,” Kindergarten Journal, Chicago Kindergarten College Alumnae Association, Volume 6, No. 4, p. 141,

     After your babe’s next bath, put him freely on the bed still in his birthday clothes […] I happen to know one mother who has made daily practice of this bareskin play with her youngest child.

   • 1942, “Campus Caravan,” The George Washington University Hatchet, Volume 39, No. 14, 15 December, 1942, p. 2,

     […] the WAAC, A.W.O.L. from Ft. Des Moines, who was found doing a bareskin act in a local burlesque, was a misguided miss who had taken these Navy “Strip for Action” posters too seriously.

   • 1961, Robert A. Heinlein, chapter 8, in Stranger in a Strange Land, New York: Avon, OCLC 1036878670, page 67:

     She believed herself to be free of morbid modesty—she recalled suddenly that she had gone on her first bareskin swimming party at fifteen.

Synonyms

• naked
• nude

Anagrams

• bearskin, break-ins, breaks in, inbreaks, sea-brink