brassy
1 Americannoun
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brassies
plural
adjective
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insolent; brazen
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flashy; showy
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(of sound) harsh, strident, or resembling the sound of a brass instrument
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like brass, esp in colour
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decorated with or made of brass
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a variant spelling of brassie
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Adjectives
Etymology
Origin of brassy
Explanation
Someone who's brassy is bold and flashy — and maybe even a little rude. That brassy kid in class seems to get all the attention, while their quiet, shy classmates get overlooked. Use the adjective brassy to mean bold and brash, or to describe something that looks like the metal brass (but not in a good way): "He tried to dye his hair strawberry blonde, but it came out brassy." When something sounds brassy, it resembles a trumpet or trombone, or another brass instrument. The "brazen" meaning comes from a comparison of brass to gold; in the 16th century, brassy meant "strident and artificial."
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.
See Examples For:
Danielle Pinnock’s character, a Jamaican woman who is taken to America by a wizened older man she refers to as the “old raisin,” has a brassy boldness and bawdiness that also seduces the audience’s affections.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 14, 2026
The star, whose real name is Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, was competing with himself for song and record of the year, as the brassy “Baile Inolvidable” and the mournful “DTMF” were nominated in both categories.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 14, 2025
As performers, Waddington and Alfaiate are less timeless than than they are out of time, bringing soul and shading to silent-movie archetypes of the timid man and his brassy gal.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 27, 2025
As the Woodstone mansion’s resident Prohibition-era jazz singer, Pinnock drew inspiration from the likes of Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith for the overt confidence of her brassy, flamboyant character.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 4, 2024
The brassy insolence in his voice that had so frightened her.
From "The God of Small Things" by Arundhati Roy
Simone Thiou de la Chaume, 15, petite Parisian prodigy, smacked her drives, whacked her brassies, cracked her irons, popped her putts in, won the British Girls' Golf Championship, was hailed "Lenglen of the Links."
From Time Magazine Archive
"A drive, two brassies, an approach, and forty puts, I presume?"
From Olympian Nights by John Kendrick Bangs
The greater elaboration of such brassies as we had seen impressed us, and we also found some trouble with our oak heads in that, being green, they were rather inclined to chip and crack.
From The Complete Golfer by Harry Vardon
We called these tin-plated drivers our brassies, and they were certainly an improvement on our original clubs.
From The Complete Golfer by Harry Vardon
Both used brassies and both were short of the green.
From Fore! by Charles Emmett Van Loan
As a host, Ratajkowski has a gentler presence than the brassier personalities — Cooper, Joe Rogan, Dax Shepard — that currently rule the podcast charts.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 6, 2023
Wearing gold lamé pants or a gauzy floor-length cape, she would introduce herself as “a shy, innocent petite flower” before revealing another, brassier side of her personality.
From Washington Post ● Oct. 7, 2022
Once they graduated to the line, they adopted the brassier, saltier argot that cooking in conditions of extreme heat and pressure seemed to require.
From The New Yorker ● Nov. 18, 2019
As a 1959 Broadway show, it was already an anachronism, surrounded by the brassier, more urgent West Side Story, Gypsy and Fiorello!
From Time ● Mar. 2, 2015
The cornet could be heard approaching nearer and nearer becoming brassier and brassier.
From Adventures of Bindle by Herbert George Jenkins
He goes on to sketch his brassiest teenage move of all — picking up the phone one day in 1999 and calling Walter Alvarez at the University of California at Berkeley.
From Washington Post ● Jun. 1, 2018
What’s life like for those who reach for the brassiest of brass rings—the American presidency—and miss?
From Slate ● Nov. 10, 2012
With beaming approval from the Krernlin, Moscow last week was feverishly preparing for the biggest, brassiest and most bountiful New Year's blowout in Communist history.
From Time Magazine Archive
Streisand is a showboater, a sort of one-woman Hippodrome whose roots are in the brassiest tradition of the American musical theater.
From Time Magazine Archive
She Had by the gods since time out of mind at their banquets been dreaded, Yelling with brassiest voice orders to great and to small.
From Erotica Romana by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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