The Quick Answer

What is the difference between bare and bear?

Bare means exposed (e.g., without clothes). For everything else, use bear.

Note: The term to bear fruit uses bear not bare. (This term is often mistakely written as to bare fruit.)

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Bear or Bare

• Bear the cost
• Bear the pain
• Bear the brunt
• Bear the burden
• Bear the consequences
• Bear the thought
• Bear the weight
• Bear the name
• Bear fruit

Bear

• We come bearing gifts for your chief.
• Our camels do not mate regularly, but we are expecting Tsu Tsu to bear her first baby next season.
• This small tree bears hundreds of apples every year.
• Who will bear the responsibility for this vandalism?
• My auntie is the tall lady bearing the green hat.
(Bear means to wear as opposed to carry in this example.)
• He bears himself with utmost dignity.
(Bear can mean to carry in an even looser sense.)
• You bear a resemblance to your mother.
• Does this document bear your signature?
• I bear bad news, I'm afraid.

• Mrs Taylor cannot bear the constant drone of the generator.
• I have learnt to bear the cold.
  
• It is very easy to endure the difficulties of one's enemies. It is the successes of one's friends that are hard to bear. (Oscar Wilde)

• Bear left at the next two Y junctions.
• This track bears north for the next 10 miles and then bears east as far as the lake.

Bare

• Don't go out in bare feet. You'll catch a cold.
  
• Was the protestor totally bare when he ran in the meeting room?
• You need to cover those pipes. Bare pipes will freeze this winter.
• Peter ploughed those fields with his bear hands?
(This should be bare hands.)

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