chutzpah
Britishnoun
Etymology
Origin of chutzpah
C20: from Yiddish
Explanation
Chutzpah means fearlessness. It takes chutzpah to stand in front of the whole class and announce that you are a better writer than William Shakespeare. Chutzpah is a Yiddish word meaning "impudence or gall." Bravery that borders on rudeness is chutzpah, which rhymes with "foot spa." If you have chutzpah, you say what you think without worrying about hurting someone's feelings, looking silly, or getting in trouble. A display of chutzpah is meant to make a statement, like the chutzpah of the girl who shaves her head in protest of impossible beauty standards.
Vocabulary lists containing chutzpah
Hidden Figures
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Scrabble: High Scoring Words
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Into the Wild
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Say what you like about Elon Musk, you have to give him credit for his vision and his chutzpah.
From MarketWatch • Jun. 10, 2026
To begin with, there’s its ingratiating style, leisurely but leavened with wit and chutzpah, as well as Fiedler’s pervasive disdain for the sentimental and ersatz.
From The Wall Street Journal • May 22, 2026
He added: "Nigel Farage has chutzpah to return to the stage and say 'things are disastrous, and I'm the person to fix it'."
From BBC • Mar. 18, 2026
Yiddish, the language spoken by Ashkenazi Jews across Europe before the Holocaust, is now perhaps best known to many English speakers through words such as "schlep", "klutz" and "chutzpah".
From Barron's • Oct. 26, 2025
In solo climbing the whole enterprise is held together with little more than chutzpah, not the most reliable adhesive.
From "Into the Wild" by Jon Krakauer
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
