chutzpah

Alternative Spellings

hutspa, hutzpa, khuptspe, chutspa, hutzpah, chutzpa

Definitions

• guts (positive)
• nerve, audacity, the quality of over-stepping boundries with no shame (negative)

Example Sentences

• "He had a lot of chutzpah telling the professor that his statement was false."

Languages of Origin

Textual Hebrew, Yiddish, Modern Hebrew

Etymology

Heb חוצפה khutspá, Yiddish חוצפּה khútspe

Who Uses This

Jews: Jews of diverse religious backgrounds and organizational involvements
Non-Jews: (words that have spread outside of Jewish networks)

Regions

North America

Dictionaries

The New Joys of Yiddish, by Leo Rosten and Lawrence Bush (New York, 2003[1968]).
Yiddish and English: A Century of Yiddish in America, by Sol Steinmetz (Tuscaloosa, 1986).
The Joys of Hebrew, by Lewis Glinert (New York, 1992).
Frumspeak: The First Dictionary of Yeshivish, by Chaim Weiser (Northvale, 1995).
Dictionary of Jewish Usage: A Guide to the Use of Jewish Terms, by Sol Steinmetz (Lanham, MD, 2005).
The JPS Dictionary of Jewish Words, by Joyce Eisenberg and Ellen Scolnic, (Philadelphia, 2001)

Notes

Originally it had only negative connotations, but on the influence of English "nerve," it came to have positive or negative connotations (see Gold 1985, p. 289). Leo Rosten, Joys of Yiddish: "Gall, brazen nerve, effrontery, incredible 'guts'; presumption plus arrogance such as no other word, and no other language, can do justice to. The classic definition of chutzpa is, of course, this: Chutzpa is that quality enshrined in a man who, having killed his mother and father, throws himself on the mercy of the court because he is an orphan."