Word.ws English Dictionary

balder

/bɔːld.ə/US/bɔld.ɚ/

balder is the comparative form of bald.

Meaning of bald

Adjective

bald (comparative balder, superlative baldest)

  1. Having little or no hair, fur, or feathers.
    • My uncle is bald.
    Synonyms:
    hairless
    Antonyms:
    faxed, haired
    1. (specifically) Having little or no hair on the head, or having a large area of bare scalp on top of the head.
      • a bald man with a moustache
  2. Of animals, having areas (of fur or plumage) that are colored white, especially on the head.
  3. Of hair, nonexistent.
    • All my grandmothers are bald, all the way back to Tilly. Grandma Tilly from 1721. Full head of bald hair.2018, Jerma985, 3:43 from the start, in Would I Lie to You?, spoken by Jerma985, via YouTube
  4. (figuratively) Lacking any covering.
    • The bald cypress is a tree that loses its leaves in winter.
  5. (figuratively) Of a tyre, whose surface is worn away.

See all 13 meanings of bald

Proper noun capitalized: Balder

Balder

  1. (Norse) The Norse god of light and purity, a son of Odin and Frigg, known for his beauty and near-invulnerability.
    • Among the Norse, the god Balder is the most closely associated with the solstices. In a myth that explains the actions of the midsummer and midwinter Sun, Balder, the son of the god Odin, was said to die at the hands of his evil brother, who wielded a mistletoe stake each summer solstice. He was...2005, A. Bhatnagar, William Charles Livingston, Fundamentals of Solar Astronomy, page 3
    • It is difficult to understand how the author of The Traditions of the God Balder (Die Uberlieferungen vom Gone Balder) from 1920 in which he compared the Balder cult with earlier Mediterranean beliefs could come out so strongly in favor of Kossinna's ex Septentrione lux scarcely a decade later.2008, Bernard Thomas Mees, The Science of the Swastika, page 175
  2. A surname.

Forms of balder

alternative formBaldr
alternative formBaldur

Origin of balder

Sense 1 is borrowed from Old Norse Baldr. Sense 2 is inherited from Old English Bealdhere (a male given name).

Questions about balder

What does balder mean?
Balder means the Norse god of light and purity, a son of Odin and Frigg, known for his beauty and near-invulnerability.
What is balder the comparative form of?
Balder is the comparative form of bald.
What part of speech is balder?
Balder is a proper noun.
How do you pronounce balder?
Balder is pronounced /bɔːld.ə/ (UK).

Words near balder in the dictionary

  1. baldening
  2. baldens
  3. Baldeo
  4. Baldeos
  5. Baldeosingh
  6. balder
  7. Balderama
  8. Balderamas
  9. Balderas
  10. Balderases
  11. balderdash

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: balder (page history and authors); Balder (page history and authors); bald (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-balder.wav.

Cite this entry: “balder.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/balder. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.