"on the bare"

That is a very un-politically-correct thing to ask. (and you know how much we pride ourselves here at the Library on being politically correct)

If the author uses an expression and the reader understands what it means, then there's no problem, is there? I have to admit that I find some of the comments on these bulletin boards a little puzzling, although very amusing. I even saw a recent comment that humans don't hiss, only snakes do. Anyone who looks up the word in a dictionary will find that anything that sounds like the letter 's' can be considered a hiss, even the word 'shit' said through clenched teeth might be considered as such. I've racked my brain and studied the reference books on my shelf and I haven't found a single instance where a person had found it necessary to discipline a snake. Nevertheless, even if one of these slippery reptiles did have a despicable urge to sink its fangs into one of my ankles, I still can't decide which part of its anatomy might merit any appropriate retribution. No doubt the authors on this site will prove me wrong! So keep writing.

Slippery!!! LOL I have snakes and although one of them would happily bite your ankles I can assure you none of them are in the slightest bit slippery

*PinkAngel hissed while grinning*

I'm sure he meant "slithery."

I'm not so sure! Slippery means clever, shifty or evasive. Yes, I've met them in my stories.

I agree with blimp on this. "Bare bottom" is such an erotic coupling that it deserves frequent inclusion in any story. It strikes me that there is something a little coy about the phrase "on the bare" - it suggest a certain immaturity, of people who cannot bring themselves to say "bottom", "arse" or even "bum". Perhaps the phrase is best avoided for adult/adult stories.

Apart from snakes and humans, many other animals hiss, mostly as a threat when they feel themselvs threatened. It is also possible for inanimate things to hiss - for example, gas escaping at pressure. I am not aware of any plants that hiss.

I always thought that in some houses there were "her stuff" and "hiss stuff" which could include plants.....LOL

Well, IIRC 'Amazon.com' at least used to sell a paperback collection of all adult/adult (M/F) spanking stories, that book being titled ON THE BARE... --C.K.

To me, "on the bare" has a ritualistic flavor. It's not all that rare for ritualistic phrases or cliches to be shortened in ways that don't make sense on their own merit. The worst example I can think of offhand is shortening, "I couldn't care less," to, "I could care less," which is nonsensical unless maybe it would be spoken in an ironic tone. In a ritualistic setting, it's not difficult to imagine the phrase, "on the bare bottom," being used often enough for a long enough period of time that somewhere along the line, people got into the habit of shortening it. That's how I interpret the phrase when I encounter it.

If I would get picky, I would say using "on the bare" doesn't ring true in most family settings or in institutional settings where there isn't any particular traditional ritual regarding how spankings are administered. But it feels like a good fit to me in a school with a longstanding tradition of carrying out corporal punishment in a ritualistic way.