naked: without covering, whether stripped bare, poorly clothed, or laid open to view
At its core this word means "without covering." Everything it describes shares that one idea, but the New Testament stretches it across a wide range, from a body with no clothes on it to a truth that nothing can hide.
The two everyday uses sit close together. Sometimes it means completely unclothed: a young man who slips out of his sheet and runs off with nothing on, a man beaten and stripped, a woman shamed by being stripped bare. Just as often, though, it means only lightly or inadequately clothed. When Jesus says "I was naked and you clothed me," or James pictures a brother or sister who is "naked," the person is not literally nude but poorly dressed, lacking the clothes they need. Peter, stripped down for work in the boat, is called "naked" in the same loose sense.
From there the word reaches into the figurative. Paul calls a seed a "bare" kernel, the plain grain with none of the plant it will become. Elsewhere nakedness pictures exposure: everything lies "laid bare" before God with nothing hidden, a self-satisfied church is really "naked" and shamefully destitute, and a warning speaks of being caught "naked" with one's shame on display. Paul even uses it for the fear of being "found naked," without a body, once this earthly life is stripped away.
Because the same word covers all of this, the English "naked" can mislead. Where it means "badly clothed" or "exposed," the fully-nude picture an English reader hears is too strong. The closest Hebrew counterpart, עָרוֹם, runs the same course, from bare skin to the shame of exposure.