Several commentators distinguish between naked and nude. Here are a couple of comments by writers on usage:
Naked and nude mean the same thing, but nude has classier connotations. It's "nude" in art. It's "naked" in the shower —Ebbitt & Ebbitt 1982
Perhaps the distinction is subjective, but naked seems to be, shall we say, the barer word —Bernstein 1971
Other commentators make similar distinctions, though they shade them variously:
To be naked is to be deprived of our clothes, and the word implies some of the embarrassment most of us feel in that condition. The word 'nude,' on the other hand, carries, in educated usage, no uncomfortable overtone —Anatole Broyard, Town & Country, October 1983
Professor McLuhan also had a linguistic point to make, noting that streakers are nude but never naked. "It's only when you don't want to be seen that you're naked," he said —Robert D. McFadden, N.Y. Times, 8 Mar. 1974
Naked may also connote vulnerability or loss of dignity:
I once saw a Czech film about a concentration camp. There was a line of naked prisoners. Now, that aspect of the human animal, in a state of great vulnerability, has not been explored by our filmmakers —Glenda Jackson, quoted in Saturday Rev., March 1981
It's hard to take an angry political statement seriously from a naked woman —And More by Andy Rooney, 1982
Nude is, as the Ebbitts observe, usual when the reference is to art. Lewis Carroll, in his letters written in the 1870s and 1880s, uses naked in reference to photography and nude in reference to drawing or painting. The status of photography has risen since then:
Take a Picasso sketch of a nude. To me, that's much nuder than any nude in a photograph —Ansel Adams, quoted in Playboy, May 1983
Nude also is used for places where unclothed people congregate and for occupations that people perform without their clothes:
... you got a lot of beaches in San Diego ... and some of them are nude —Pete Rose, quoted in Houston Post, 8 Sept. 1984
A nude dancer ... is found shot —Sybil Steinberg, Publishers Weekly, 16 Mar. 1984
Naked has a more vigorous figurative life than nude, although both have figurative extensions. You would not normally find nude in contexts like these:
(资料出处：韦伯斯特英语用法词典)The walls of the Guggenheim, which was between exhibitions, were completely naked —Christopher Petkanas, Women's Wear Daily, 5 Oct. 1981
... an arena of more naked struggle for national prestige and power —David Thomson, Europe Since Napoleon, 2d ed., rev., 1962
... to put obstacles of amour propre and naked vanity in the way —Archibald MacLeish, letter, 7 Sept. 1974
The battalion commander's briefing tent was harshly lit by two naked bulbs —John Rowe, Count Your Dead, 1968