A shamelessly bold untruth/prevaricator. Bare here means bold-faced or brazen, but one writer speculates that barefaced, which dates from the late sixteenth century, originally meant “beardless,” a condition perhaps considered audacious in all but the youngest men. In any event, by the late seventeenth century it also meant bold and became attached to lie in succeeding years. See also naked truth.

Shameless, impudent. This simile probably has the same source as brazen, which can mean either “made of brass” or “shameless,” “too bold.” The latter is older, dating at least from Shakespeare’s time (“What a brazen-faced varlet art thou!” King Lear, 2.2). The present cliché dates from the late seventeenth or early eighteenth century, although brass alone in the sense of “shameless” is older (sixteenth century). “Can any face of brass hold longer out?” wrote Shakespeare in Love’s Labour’s Lost (5.2), and Thomas Fuller (The Profane State, 1642) wrote still more explicitly, “His face is of brasse, which may be said either ever or never to blush.”

To make the best of things. This term has been around since the fourteenth century, and the practice itself, of pretending things are better than they are, is no doubt much older. “Set a good face on a bad matter,” wrote Humphrey Gifford (A Posie of Gilloflowers, 1580).