lay bare

Contents

English

Etymology

lay + bare

Verb

lay bare (third-person singular simple present lays bare, present participle laying bare, simple past and past participle laid bare)

1. To make bare; strip.

   And laid those proud roofs bare to summer's rain. --Byron

2. (figuratively) To expose to view, reveal, uncover.
   • 1919, Boris Sidis, The Source and Aim of Human Progress:

     The central and centralized, imperial governments, guided by the big interests of the country, induced in their unfortunate subjects this last pestilential epidemic of military mania by means of a persistent course of direct and indirect suggestion in which the conditions of normal and abnormal suggestibility were specially emphasized, laying bare the social subconscious, stimulating in it the fear of invasion and attack by neighboring nations, stirring up the impulse of self-preservation, rousing the entranced, hypnotized mind of the populace to a frenzy of self-defense, while the junkers, the officers, the soldiers, the professors, the journalists of the middle-classes were entranced with beatific visions of world-dominion.

Translations

reveal

• Dutch: blootleggen (nl)
• Romanian: dezvălui (ro)

• Swedish: blotta (sv), blottlägga (sv)

References

• lay bare in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911.
• “lay bare”, in OED Online ⁠, Oxford: Oxford University Press, launched 2000.