Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adjective Lacking hair on the head.
  • adjective Lacking a natural or usual covering.
  • adjective Lacking treads.
  • adjective Zoology Having white feathers or markings on the head, as in some birds or mammals.
  • adjective Lacking ornamentation; unadorned.
  • adjective Undisguised; blunt.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To make bald; deprive of hair.
  • Wanting hair, as the head, in some part (usually the top, or front and top) where it naturally grows; partly or wholly deprived of hair on the head, as a person.
  • Without the natural or usual covering of the head or top; bareheaded: as, a bald oak; a bald mountain.
  • Destitute of beard or awn: as, bald wheat.
  • Wanting force or meaning; meager; paltry: as, a bald sermon; a bald truism.
  • Destitute of appropriate ornament; too bare, plain, or literal; unadorned; inelegant: as, “a bald translation,”
  • Bare; open; undisguised.
  • Having white on the face or head: specifically applied to several birds: as, the bald buzzard, eagle, etc.
  • noun A natural meadow or grassy plain occurring on the rounded summit of a high mountain: a term in use in the southern extension of the Appalachian ranges, where a number of the highest knobs have their dome-shaped tops entirely bare of trees.
  • An obsolete and dialectal form of bold.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adjective Destitute of the natural or common covering on the head or top, as of hair, feathers, foliage, trees, etc..
  • adjective Destitute of ornament; unadorned; bare; literal.
  • adjective Undisguised.
  • adjective obsolete Destitute of dignity or value; paltry; mean.
  • adjective (Bot.) Destitute of a beard or awn.
  • adjective Destitute of the natural covering.
  • adjective Marked with a white spot on the head; bald-faced.
  • adjective (Zoöl.) the fishhawk or osprey.
  • adjective (Zoöl.) a name of the European coot (Fulica atra), alluding to the bare patch on the front of the head.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective Having no hair, fur or feathers.
  • adjective Of tyres: whose surface is worn away.
  • adjective Of a statement: empirically unsupported.
  • noun Appalachian A mountain summit or crest that lacks forest growth despite a warm climate conducive to such, as is found in many places in the Southern Appalachian Mountains.
  • verb intransitive to become bald

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • adjective lacking hair on all or most of the scalp
  • adjective without the natural or usual covering
  • adjective with no effort to conceal
  • verb grow bald; lose hair on one's head

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English balled, probably from bal, ball; see ball.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle English balled ("bald"), from ball ("white spot, blaze") ( + -ed), from Old English *bala ("white patch, blaze"), from Proto-Germanic *balô (“flame”), from Proto-Indo-European *bhela- (“light, bright”). Cognate with Danish bældet ("bald"), Gothic 𐌱𐌰𐌻𐌰- (bala-, "shining, grey (of body)"), Old English bǣl ("fire, flame; funeral pyre"). Cognate with Albanian balë ("white spot on the forehead") and ball ("forehead").

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word bald.

Examples

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.

  • German for 'soon'

    January 9, 2008

  • Baldo, in Italian, means brave; bald is calvo.

    And after so many years, here he comes to me, my Prince Charming, balder than ever...

    March 26, 2009

  • The Italian presumably related to E bold.

    March 26, 2009