Not wearing clothes. In plain terms it means the same as 'naked', but the two words feel very different. 'Unclothed' is careful, distant, and formal — the word a doctor, a museum label, a legal report, or a polite writer would choose to avoid the bluntness of 'naked'. 'The patient should be unclothed from the waist up.' 'A study of the unclothed human figure.' It is a word for writing, not for talking; if you said it to a friend you would sound like a textbook. Everyday English uses 'naked', or 'nude' for art and modelling. It can also describe a part of the body left bare rather than a whole person ('an unclothed shoulder'), and occasionally a plant or tree stripped of its leaves, though that is a literary stretch.