divestment

(New American Roget's College Thesaurus)

Stripping of covering

Nouns

1. divestment, divestiture; taking off, disrobing, undressing; [de]nudation; decortication, hair removal, depilation, excoriation, desquamation; molting, ecdysis; exfoliation. Slang, strip tease, flashing.

2. [full frontal] nudity, bareness, undress, dishabille, the nude, the buff, the raw; calvities, baldness, hairlessness; indecent exposure, exhibitionism. Informal, the altogether, birthday suit. Slang, cheesecake.

3. bald person; naturist, nudist; striptease, burlesque. Informal, skinhead. Slang, chrome-dome; raw meat; stripper, coffee-grinder.

Verbs

1. divest; uncover, denude, bare; strip, undress, disrobe, uncoif; dismantle; get, put, or take off; doff, cast, or slough off, shed; take off one's hands. Slang, peel, streak, husk, wear a smile, Adam-and-Eve it, not have a stitch on.

2. peel, pare, shell, decorticate, excoriate, skin, scale; scalp, shave, shear; flay; expose, lay open; exfoliate, molt; cast the skin.

Adjectives — divested, denuded, bare, naked, shorn, nude, in a state of nature, in one's birthday suit, with nothing on, stark naked, in the buff, [in the] raw; undressed, undraped, exposed, in dishabille; threadbare, out at elbows, ragged; bald[-headed], balding, bald as an egg, a coot, or a billiard ball; bare as the back of one's hand; barefoot; leafless, napless, hairless, beardless, clean-shaven. Informal, in the altogether. Slang, laid to the [natural] bone, au naturel, wearing nothing but a smile, naked as a jaybird, naked as the day one was born.

Phrases — clothing optional.

Quotations — Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return thither (Bible), Had I but served my God with half the zeal I served my king, he would not in mine age have left me naked to mine enemies (Shakespeare), To go naked is the best disguise (William Congreve).

Antonyms, see clothing, covering.