audacious
Americanadjective
-
extremely bold or daring; recklessly brave; fearless.
an audacious explorer.
- Synonyms:
- venturesome, dauntless, intrepid, courageous
- Antonyms:
- cowardly
-
extremely original; without restriction to prior ideas; highly inventive.
an audacious vision of the city's bright future.
-
recklessly bold in defiance of convention, propriety, law, or the like; insolent; brazen.
- Synonyms:
- forward, impertinent, shameless, unabashed
-
lively; unrestrained; uninhibited.
an audacious interpretation of her role.
adjective
-
recklessly bold or daring; fearless
-
impudent or presumptuous
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of audacious
First recorded in 1540–50; audaci(ty) + -ous
Explanation
This adjective is very bold — if you are audacious, you are daring and unconventional! The adjective audacious comes from the Latin word audacia and means "daring, boldness, courage," and often gets applied in situations where someone does something pretty unusual, like becoming an astronaut and going to the moon. It can also mean challenging conventions and doing things that most people don't do, such as when Elizabeth Blackwell became the first woman in the United States to become a doctor. Blackwell then inspired Elizabeth Garrett Anderson to become the first female doctor in England. And the rest is history!
Vocabulary lists containing audacious
The Vocabulary.com Top 1000
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100 SAT Words Beginning with "A"
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List 2
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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.
Investigators have found that Leonard’s camp got the Clippers to agree, according to the findings of a nearly yearlong investigation by Wachtell Lipton Rosen & Katz, to audacious levels of salary cap circumvention.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 3, 2026
Now Blume is considering an audacious workaround, according to people familiar with his plans.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 2, 2026
The Museum of Sonoma County devotes an exhibition to the couple’s 1976 work, an audacious effort that stretched across nearly 25 miles of Northern California.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 2, 2026
“It’s a very audacious thing to try to create a new national health insurer, ” said Katherine Hempstead, a healthcare analyst with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 30, 2026
It would have taken a very audacious biologist to guess that such animals would eventually produce the line that dominates the Earth today.
From "Cosmos" by Carl Sagan
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.
