Bald-faced or bold-faced?
Is the correct term bald or bold?
Apart from that statement, I’ve never heard anyone say someone has a bald face. Then again, I’ve never actually heard of anyone describe a person’s face as bold either.
According to answers.com, both terms are correct.
Google has 1,170,000 results for bold-faced and 490,000 for bald-faced, making bold-faced the clear winner of the popularity vote.
With a brief Google search, I think of “etymology bald-faced” or maybe “bold-faced lie” or some combination, I read an article or two that said they both came from “bare-faced” but both are considered acceptable now. To me, it seems like it went “bare-faced” –> “bald-faced” –> “bold-faced” and I would use “bald-faced” myself. Do you think your Google search for the two might have been affected by the fact that “bare-faced” is used basically only in the phrase “bare-faced lie” nowadays, but “bold-faced” might also be referring to text formatting? I think I would just say that something should be bold, but our proofreader’s mark for bold is “bf”.
DaveH: That’s a good point about bold-faced for text. I hadn’t thought about that skewing the numbers.