Synonyms

chutzpah

British

/ ˈxʊtspə /

noun

informal shameless audacity; impudence

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

chutzpah Cultural

Yiddish term for courage bordering on arrogance, roughly equivalent to “nerve” (in the slang sense): “It took a lot of chutzpah to make such a controversial statement.”

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.

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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.

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

Launching a business without your knowledge when you were about to give birth takes some chutzpah.

From MarketWatch • Mar. 2, 2026

Four years later, he had enough arriviste chutzpah to run for state governor as the candidate for the Liberty Union Party—a leftist Vermont grouping.

From The Wall Street Journal • Jan. 29, 2026

Then you work up the chutzpah to share it with other people.

From Los Angeles Times • Dec. 2, 2025

Worrying about Max and the failure of my chutzpah.

From "The Light in Hidden Places" by Sharon Cameron

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023