bold face liar

[Arnold Zwicky]

i was struck by the main page 1 story in the Palo Alto Daily News
today, which included the following:

  "She's lying," teachers union co-president Martha Hanks
  said.  "She's a bold face liar, and you can quote me on
  that."

didn't find this reinterpreted idiom in the list archives.  google
turned up "about 59" examples for "bold face liar", "about 196" for
"bold faced liar", "about 62" for "bald face liar" (though it asked if
i meant "bold face liar"), and, whew, "about 511" for "bald faced
liar".  google disregards hyphens, but treats closed-up words as
different from separated or hyphenated words, so here are the full
statistics (useful only for rough size comparisons, since they include
some dupes):

                separate/hyphenated     closed-up       total
BOLD FACE        59                     171             230
BOLD FACED      196                      22             218
BALD FACE        62                       3              65
BALD FACED      511                      42             553

 total BOLD     255                     193             448
 total BALD     573                      45             618

 total FACE     121                     174             295
 total FACED    707                     238             771

possibly interesting interaction between the two dimensions:

                FACE    FACED   total
        BOLD    230     218      448
        BALD     65     553      618
        total   295     771     1066

this array *could* result from there being two separate contributions
to BOLD FACE: the general past-participle omission of MASH POTATO and
its ilk, plus BOLD FACE LIAR now being treated by some speakers as a
separate idiom ('someone lying with a bold face'), not involving a
past participle.

yes, yes, i know, i should also look at BOLD FACE LIE etc.

arnold (zwicky at csli.stanford.edu)