lay bare

present singular third person lays bare · participle present laying bare · participle past laid bare · past laid bare

1. To make bare; strip.

   And laid those proud roofs bare to Summer's rain—

   1816, Lord Byron, “Canto III”, in Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage. Canto the Third, London: […] [F]or John Murray, […], →OCLC, stanza LVIII, page 34

   Synonyms: crack, open, unseal

2. figurativelyTo expose to view, reveal, uncover.

   2 more examples

   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.

   1919, Boris Sidis, The Source and Aim of Human Progress

   "This is further proof that ASLEF is willing to negotiate in good faith and modernise our railway. And further proof that the failure of negotiations with the TOCs in England is the responsibility of Transport Secretary Mark Harper, the Department for Transport, and the Rail Delivery Group. That has been laid bare for all to see."

   2023 May 31, Mel Holley, “Network News: ASLEF recommends £71,000 pay deal for TfW drivers”, in RAIL, number 984, page 20

   Synonyms: nake