bare

Bare means nothing is covering it. Bare feet on a cold kitchen floor, bare walls in an empty flat, bare branches in February.

Bare also means empty or stripped down: bare shelves in a shop, a bare room with a mattress in the corner. From there it slides into only just enough — the bare minimum, the bare essentials, the bare bones of a plan. As a verb, to bare something is to uncover it: a dog bares its teeth, a friend bares their soul. Two traps sit next to this word. Bare is not bear, the animal and the verb meaning to carry or endure, so the phrase is bear with me and never bare with me. And barely does not mean nakedly; it means only just, as in he barely passed.

Phrases it lives in

• with your bare hands — using no tools or weapons at all
• lay something bare — to reveal something that was hidden
• the bare bones — only the most basic facts of something