bald

(bôld)

adj. bald·er, bald·est

1. Lacking hair on the head.

2. Lacking a natural or usual covering: a bald spot on the lawn.

3. Lacking treads: a bald tire.

4. Zoology Having white feathers or markings on the head, as in some birds or mammals.

5. Lacking ornamentation; unadorned.

6. Undisguised; blunt: a bald statement of policy.

[Middle English balled, probably from bal, ball; see ball¹. Sense 4, perhaps partly of Celtic origin; akin to Welsh bal, having a white streak on the forehead (of horses), Irish ball, spot, mark, and English blaze, white mark on the face of an animal; see blaze².]

bald′ly adv.

bald′ness n.

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Baldness

See Also:HAIR

Bald as a ballpeen hammer —Thomas Lux
Bald as a brass knob —Beverly Farmer
Bald as a nun —Patrick White
Bald and wrinkled as a lizard —Sarah Bird
See Also:WRINKLES
Bald as a balloon —Percival Wilde
Bald as a barefaced lie —Anon
Bald as a bearing —Loren D. Estleman
Bald as a billiard ball —Anon
Of the many objects comparatively linked with baldness, the billiard or cue ball probably ranks at the very top.
Bald as a brick —Raymond Chandler
Bald as an egg —Anon
Bald as a football —William Boyd
Bald as an orange —Thomas Bailey Aldrich
Bald as a winter tree —William Morris
Bald as convicts —George Garrett
Bald as peeled onion —Margaret Laurence
Bald as the beach —William Diehl
Bald as the palm of your hand —Richard Harris Barham
Bald as time —Richard Prome
Bald head shining like a polished stone —George Garrett
The gleaming skull [of bald-headed man] shone like a supernatural sun —Sholem Asch
Had gone completely bald very young as though to get that over with as soon as possible —Helen Hudson
Hair beginning to recede like the polar ice cap in warm weather —Jean Thompson
Head as smooth as a knob —Russell Baker, New York Times, May 17, 1986
He had a bald patch on the top of his head which made him look rather like a monk —Guy De Maupassant
He was bald, his back hair was thick and projected like one of those large tree mushrooms that grow on the mossy side of a trunk —Saul Bellow
His bald head coming to a point, like an egg —Richard Llwellyn
His bald head shone … like an agitated moon —Erich Maria Remarque
His head [bald, with ring of grey-brown hair] was like the brown edges of a leaf in fall, a sign that the tree, however tall and green from a distance, was being eaten away at the edges, dying from the outside in —Jay Parini
His strong, bald head had a dull glow, like old ivory —Ivan Bunin
No more hair than a stone —John MacDonald
A semi-circular fringe of white hair surrounding his bald pate like a broken halo —Margaret Millar

ThesaurusAntonymsRelated WordsSynonymsLegend:

Noun

baldness - the condition of having no hair on the top of the head

phalacrosis

depilation, hairlessness - the condition of being void of hair

alopecia - loss of hair (especially on the head) or loss of wool or feathers; in humans it can result from heredity or hormonal imbalance or certain diseases or drugs and treatments (chemotherapy for cancer)

male pattern baldness, male-patterned baldness - loss of hair on the crown of the head

baldness

noun hairlessness, alopecia (Pathology), baldheadedness, baldpatedness, glabrousness (Biology) He wears a cap to cover a spot of baldness.

Collins Thesaurus of the English Language – Complete and Unabridged 2nd Edition. 2002 © HarperCollins Publishers 1995, 2002

Translations

صَلَع

plešatostsuchopárnost

skaldethed

Kahlheit

φαλάκρα

calvitie

kopaszság

skalli

calvizie

skallethet

plešivosť

dazlaklıkkellik

光秃秃

baldness

[ˈbɔːldnɪs] N

1. [of person] → calvicie f

2. [of tyre] → desgaste m

3. [of statement] → lo directo; [of style] → lo escueto

Collins Spanish Dictionary - Complete and Unabridged 8th Edition 2005 © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1971, 1988 © HarperCollins Publishers 1992, 1993, 1996, 1997, 2000, 2003, 2005

baldness

[ˈbɔːldnɪs] n → calvitie f

Collins English/French Electronic Resource. © HarperCollins Publishers 2005

baldness

→ Kahlheit f

(of style, statement) → Knappheit f

Collins German Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged 7th Edition 2005. © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1980 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1997, 1999, 2004, 2005, 2007

baldness

[ˈbɔːldnɪs] n → calvizie fsg

Collins Italian Dictionary 1st Edition © HarperCollins Publishers 1995

bald

(boːld) adjective

1. (of people) with little or no hair on the head. a bald head; He is going bald (= becoming bald).

2. (of birds, animals) without feathers, fur etc. a bald patch on the dog's back.

3. bare or plain. a bald statement of the facts.

ˈbaldness noun

ˈbalding adjective

becoming bald.

ˈbaldly adverb

in a plain or bare way. He answered her questions baldly.

bald·ness

n. calvicie.

baldness

n calvicie f; frontal — calvicie frontal; vertex — calvicie del vértice, calvicie de la parte superior de la cabeza

Mentioned in

References in classic literature

Nor is it difficult to perceive the tendency of this abandon-to elevate immeasurably all the energies of mind-but, again, so to mingle the greatest possible fire, force, delicacy, and all good things, with the lowest possible bathos, baldness, and imbecility, as to render it not a matter of doubt that the average results of mind in such a school will be found inferior to those results in one (ceteris paribus) more artificial.

View in context

He was a man of somewhat less than average height, inclined to corpulence, with his hair, worn long, arranged over the scalp so as to conceal his baldness. He was clean-shaven.

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He quite realises my idea of King Lear, as he appeared when in possession of his kingdom, Mr Richard--the same good humour, the same white hair and partial baldness, the same liability to be imposed upon.

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But the doctor was much the more respectable-looking man of the two; his baldness was more intellectual and benevolent; there was a delicacy and propriety in the pulpiness of his fat white chin, a bland bagginess in his unwhiskered cheeks, a reverent roughness about his eyebrows and a fullness in his lower eyelids, which raised him far higher, physiognomically speaking, in the social scale, than my old prison acquaintance.

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Even baldness, when it is only baldness over the forehead (as in his case), is rather becoming than not in a man, for it heightens the head and adds to the intelligence of the face.

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If it were not for this baldness, and a kind of crapulous air I can't disguise from myself - if it weren't for this and that and t'other thing - I - I've forgot what I was saying.

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"Three score years and ten, baldness, and spectacles, have their advantages after all!", I said to myself.

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Of course, as we have seen, he was quite a simple man; indeed be might have passed for a boy again if he had been able to take his baldness off; but he had also a noble sense of justice and a lion's courage to do what seemed right to him; and having thought the matter out with anxious care after the flight of the children, he went down on all fours and crawled into the kennel.

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In spite of his obtrusive baldness, he gave the impression of youth.

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baldness, which is one of degree and has no sharp boundaries.

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A great white cap, with a quantity of opaque frilling that was always flapping about, apologised for Maggy's baldness, and made it so very difficult for her old black bonnet to retain its place upon her head, that it held on round her neck like a gipsy's baby.

View in context

If I am reserved to wear a wig, I am at least prepared, externally,' in allusion to his baldness, 'for that distinction.

View in context