Hirsute.

Can a man with a beard tell a bare faced lie?

Only if he’s in a forest and nobody hears him.

Yes, a bald faced lie (aka bare faced lie) is more about the confidence and seeming trustworthiness of the one telling it rather than facial hair or the lack thereof.

If you can fake sincerity you’ve got it made!

If he lied and said he didn’t have a beard.

He would get bad marx for lying.

In his case, it would be a bear faced lie.

He has a black moustache so he can’t tell a white lie.

Moved to MPSIMS from GQ.

Colibri
General Questions Moderator

The real question is, can you tell a lying-faced bear? Knowing a bear’s intentions can be a life-saver in the wild.

This is why I don’t support the right to arm bears. They might be lying, and you’ll never know until it’s too late.

But the whole point of the expression is that people seem more trustworthy, not only when their manner expresses confidence, but when you can see that–when their face is unconcealed.

There’s a reason it’s the ‘evil’ twin that has the beard, rather than the other way round.

But we don’t really know whether he really does have a beard . . .

“Schrödinger’s beard.”

Do you mean a beard in a box?

You know, I think someone (Cecil?) needs to research the evolution of this phrase.

I always thought it was “a bold-faced lie” because, as you can see, something that is printed in bold-face type sticks out as glaringly obvious (which, in fact, is exactly the intended use of the bold-face font).

Can a bearded, or beardless, man tell a lie that is glaringly obvious (to those who bother to look)?
Why does anyone tell bold-faced (i.e. blatant) lies? Is it just to test the gullibility of the audience?

And then somehow that phrase seems to have turned to “a bald-faced lie” for which I’ve never quite been able to imagine an explanation (although Peremensoe’s is interesting).
Did she tell bald-faced lies, knowing that you lack the ability to recognize the deception from her carefully-controlled expressions?

And, from there that phrase seems to have turned into “a bare-faced lie” which allows the speaker (liar) to retain locks and ringlets so long as his (her?) mandibular whiskers are shorn.

—G!

When I was in Guatemala, we used to drink really fresh coffee.
We’d make it fresh from picking the beans, right out there in the fields!
…–“Verbal” Kint (Kevin Spacey)
…The Usual Suspects (None of which has a beard)

I used to be a werewolf but I’m ok now.