1. fig. Unblushing, shameless, audacious, daring; = FOREHEADLESS a. Now rare.
1605. B. Jonson, Volpone, IV. v. The most prodigious, and most frontlesse piece Of solid impudence.
1615. Chapman, Odyss., I. 425. Command to towns of their nativity These frontless wooers.
1633. T. Adams, Exp. 2 Peter ii. 10. The whelps of that Roman litter have thus cast frontless imputations upon them.
1739. Cibber, Apol. (1756), I. 99. They fairly damn’d it, as if the Author had impos’d upon them the most frontless or incredible Absurdity.
1791. Boswell, Johnson, 10 Sept., an. 1773. The duchess had not superior parts, but was a bold frontless woman.
1823. Blackw. Mag., XIV. 464. We have … editors frontless enough to advocate them.
1850. L. Hunt, Autobiog., II. xi. 79. The repulsiveness of a republic … with its frontless love of money.
1886. Swinburne, Miscell., 297. A brainless and frontless trafficker in scandal.
2. Of a house: That has had its front destroyed.
1887. Pall Mall G., 1 March, 12/1. Diano Marina is a wreck…. The passengers in the trains look into frontless houses.
Hence Frontlessly adv., Frontlessness.
1618. Chapman, Hesiod, 143. The worse deprauing the better; and that so frontlesly, that Shame and Iustice, should flie the earth for them.
1631. Brathwait, Whimzies, Ruffian, 83. Hee will intrude most frontlesly into any company.
1698. K. Fergusson, Ecclesiastick, 5. Without a strange frontlessness, they can neither deny [etc.].
1709. J. Logan, in Pa. Hist. Soc. Mem., X. 370. I cannot persuade myself that any man will be so frontlessly base.
