pizzazz
Britishnoun
Etymology
Origin of pizzazz
C20: origin obscure
Explanation
People with pizzazz are glamorous and fun to be with; they have that certain something that attracts others to them. Inanimate objects can also have pizzazz, like a school gymnasium that's been decorated for a dance or a website that's redesigned to be more flashy and exciting. Pizzazz began in the 1930s as a slang term, and it's still considered an informal way of describing excitement or zest.
Vocabulary lists containing pizzazz
Leeva at Last
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Keep Dancing, Lizzie Chu
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Those Kids from Fawn Creek
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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 paid a high price for his lack of pizzazz when he ran for president in 2002.
From Barron's ● Mar. 23, 2026
His pizzazz was a large measure of his appeal, along with his manufactured image as a shrewd businessman with a kingly touch and infallible judgment.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 4, 2026
Costume designer Paula Bradley drapes Kardashian and her co-stars in a range of expensive fabrics, occasionally burying them in a dead animal or Muppet skin to add pizzazz.
From Salon ● Nov. 6, 2025
The early scenes have a certain ponderous solemnity as two hunter-warrior-predator brothers from the Yautja race fight for honor with weapons that combine the clank of all things medieval with modern pizzazz.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 6, 2025
Surely her cockiness, her optimism and energy, her pizzazz, will get her out of this.
From "The Handmaid's Tale" by Margaret Atwood
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Get a wordDefinitions 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.
