adverb & adj. Chiefly Northern U.S. With no clothes on.
Regional Note: The chiefly Northern U.S. expression
bare-naked illustrates the linguistic process of redundancy, not always acceptable in Standard English but productive in regional dialect speech. A redundant expression combines two words that mean the same thing, thereby intensifying the effect. The expression
buck-naked, used chiefly in the South Atlantic and Gulf states, is not as clear as
bare-naked with respect to its origin;
buck is possibly an alteration of
butt, “buttocks.” If so,
bum-naked, heard in various parts of the country, and
bare-ass(ed), attested especially in the Northeastern U.S., represent the same idea.