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have the guts

Idioms  

  1. Possess the courage, as in Does he have the guts to dive off the high board? This expression replaces the earlier and now obsolete sense of stomach as “courage,” a usage from the early 1500s. [Slang; late 1800s]

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.

Will this crop of European leaders have the guts?

From The Wall Street Journal • Feb. 17, 2026

"Every time you get your heart broken you have to bounce back and it makes for a better story – but you have to have the guts to keep going after it," Rotella added.

From BBC • Apr. 13, 2025

Not even the stylist teams at her beck and call have the guts to be brutally honest about her choices.

From Salon • May 2, 2024

But if you don’t have the guts to say what you mean, we’ll never get there.

From Los Angeles Times • Dec. 12, 2023

And Len wouldn’t have the guts to even look.

From "The Last Cuentista" by Donna Barba Higuera

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.