Bold-Faced vs. Bald-Faced

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Jamie, and I’m calling from Carlsbad, California.

Well, hello, Jamie. Welcome to the program.

Hi, Jamie.

Hi. How are you doing?

Super duper. What can we do for you?

My husband and I were having a lively political debate a couple nights ago, and we were talking, and I said, that is a bald-faced lie.

And he said, I think you mean bold-faced lie.

So needless to say, the political conversation stopped, and we kind of got into a little discussion about whether it was bald-faced lie or bold-faced lie.

Nice move by your husband there.

Sounds vigorous, though. What kind of fighting was this? Was it physical?

Were you calling each other liars?

Not us, but maybe a certain politician.

Okay. So you’re arguing for bald-faced?

Yes. B-A-L-D, like bald head.

And he was arguing for bold, like as in bold type or bold action.

Oh, okay. Okay.

And then I was thinking, well, maybe I was just saying bold that was like a southern drawl or something.

So I’m not sure.

You know, when I hear boldface lie, I always think of typeface, you know, like maybe a boldface lie is pretty bad, but then a boldface italicized, underlined, Times New Roman lie with 72 point fonts.

Exactly. And I think that’s what my husband was thinking. But I was pretty sure it was baldface, but who knows.

And that is the more common version of it, although you do hear bold-faced a whole lot.

There are some sticklers who will say it is bald-faced instead of bold-faced.

But you know what? The fact is that they both go back to an earlier version that’s neither one of those, which is bare-faced.

Huh.

Yeah, which hundreds of years ago meant sort of open and unconcealed and shameless, that kind of thing.

Interesting.

And then especially in this country, it ended up being bald-faced, but a lot of people say bald-faced.

Yeah, because it’s that bald meaning which means undisguised or uncovered, right?

So you haven’t even made any effort whatsoever to hide your lie.

You’re going to tell the lie without even trying.

Right.

Okay.

So which one of us was right?

You are slightly more correct in a very formal sense, but your husband is also correct because he joins the masses in using bald-faced.

Okay.

So we’re both right.

I like that.

Yeah, you’re more right than he is.

But you can both jointly condemn the politician you’re talking about.

Okay.

Yeah, you both agreed about that.

We did.

We did.

Okay.

Okay.

Well, thanks so much.

Oh, sure.

Our pleasure.

All right.

Have a good day.

Bye-bye.

Thanks, Jamie.

Bye-bye.

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