hairless

"Hairless" means without hair or fur, or with so little that the skin looks bare. You will often see it used for animals such as the Sphynx cat or the Chinese Crested dog, which are known for having very little coat. It can also describe skin or a part of the body that has no visible hair. The idea is simple: you expect hair to be there, but it is missing or very slight. A phrase like "the hairless ape" is a playful way to refer to humans because we have much less body hair than other primates.

The word "hairless" describes someone or something that has no hair or fur, or almost none. It is close in meaning to "bald," but the two are not always used in exactly the same way. "Bald" often suggests that hair is missing from a place where it used to grow, especially on a person's head. "Hairless" more often describes a general condition or appearance: the skin or surface looks bare because there is little or no hair on it.

You will most often see "hairless" used for animals. A Sphynx cat, for example, is called hairless because it appears to have no fur, even though it may still have a fine layer of soft fuzz. The same idea can be used for people, body parts, or skin, especially when the lack of hair is easy to notice. In this sense, the word often points to a clear visual contrast between what is normal and what is absent.

The word can also be used in technical writing for plants or other natural forms that lack tiny hairs on their surface, though that is less common in everyday English. In ordinary use, however, it stays very literal. It usually does not carry the broad figurative meanings that "bald" can have. Even so, "hairless" is often a relative term rather than an absolute one: many animals described this way still have a light fuzz that is hard to see. Overall, the word suggests a noticeable absence of hair where you might normally expect some.