[Ads-l] Bald-faced liar

ADSGarson O'Toole adsgarsonotoole at GMAIL.COM
Sun Feb 17 00:19:41 UTC 2019


Michael Quinion discussed this topic from an historical perspective on
his World Wide Words website back in 2009. (I have not tried to
antedate the citations.)

Bald-faced, boldfaced or barefaced?
http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-bal2.htm

Mignon Fogarty (Grammar Girl) offers some background and stylistic
advice on her Quick and Dirty Tips website:‘

Baldfaced Lie’ or ‘Barefaced Lie’?
Whether you use "barefaced lie" or "baldfaced lie" depends on where
you live, but you shouldn't use "boldfaced lie" or "bearfaced lie."
https://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/baldfaced-lie-or-barefaced-lie

Garson

On Sat, Feb 16, 2019 at 6:25 PM James A. Landau <JJJRLandau at netscape.com> wrote:
>
> An email from Ultraviolet.org (I'll be happy to forward it to anyone who is interested) had the subject line "Susan Collins: Bald-faced liar".
>
> I think it most likely someone meant to say "bare-faced liar" and didn't quite get it correct.  However, there is the possibility the e-mail writer thought "a woman cannot be described as "bare-faced" and substituted a similar-sounding adjective.
>
> - Jim Landau
>
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> Netscape.  Just the Net You Need.
>
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