To make or become bald; an archaic or dialectal form meaning to lose hair or remove hair.
From Old English 'bæld,' with the addition of the suffix '-en' to create a verb form, following the pattern of Old English weak verbs like 'darken' or 'lighten.'
This old verb form 'balden' survives mostly in dialects now, but it shows the elegant system English used to have where you could add '-en' to adjectives to make verbs—'darken,' 'brighten,' 'deafen,' 'balden'—though we've mostly forgotten this pattern.
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