Re: tan: bold vs. bald

[Vicki Rosenzweig <murphy!acmcr!vr -at- UUNET -dot- UU -dot- NET>]

It gets better. I checked the dictionary (Webster's Ninth, which
is what I have handy here at the office) and found that bald-faced
pointed to bare-faced, which in this context would be either
"open, unconcealed" or "lacking scruples" and bold-faced means
"bold in manner or conduct: impudent." I've always said "bald-faced
liar" myself (on the occasions when I've used the phrase at all),
but bold-faced is an older term (or rather, there's earlier written
evidence for it--what people were _saying_ is much harder to track
down). I suppose I could argue for an extremely subtle distinction,
that a bald-faced liar is one who thinks there's nothing wrong with
lying and a bold-faced liar is one who lies in an impudent manner,
but I think that's pushing a point. I do think, though, that both
terms are common enough to be acceptable and, from the editorial
viewpoint, our only concern should be consistency: try not to use
both in the same piece of work (not that I see much call for either
in technical writing).

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