naked [OE] The Old English word naked comes from the same ultimate root as nude [LME], from Latin nudus. The sense of ‘blatant, clear, unashamed’, as in naked ambition, dates from the 13th century. The naked truth, meaning ‘the plain truth, without concealment or embellishment’, dates back to the 14th century. It may originally have developed as a translation of the Latin phrase nudaque veritas in the Odes of the Roman writer Horace, or have come from fables personifying Truth as a naked woman, in contrast to Falsehood, who is elaborately dressed. Stark naked [LME] is an alteration of start naked, which probably meant ‘naked even to the tail’, as a start was an animal’s tail—as in the red-rumped bird the redstart [M16th]. Stark naked developed into starkers in the 1920s. The change was made the easier because stark, which had meant ‘hard, stiff’ in Old English had come to mean ‘absolutely, utterly’ in Late Middle English, as in stark staring mad [M16th]. Words related to stark include the starch [OE] used for stiffening clothes and probably the stork [OE] from the bird’s stiff posture.