Chutzpah

Chutzpah

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
For other uses, see Chutzpah (disambiguation).
Chutzpah  is the quality of audacity, for good or for bad. It derives from the Hebrew word meaning "insolence", "cheek" or "audacity". Thus the original Yiddish word has a strongly negative connotation but the form which entered English as a Yiddishism in American English has taken on a broader meaning, having been popularized through vernacular use in film, literature, and television. The word is sometimes interpreted—particularly in business parlance—as meaning the amount of courage, mettle or ardor that an individual has.

Etymology

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Originated 1890–95 from Yiddish , from Mishnaic Hebrew  from  “to be insolent”. Ultimately from Aramaic “to be barefaced, insolent”).

In Hebrew, chutzpah is used indignantly, to describe someone who has overstepped the boundaries of accepted behavior. In traditional usage, the word expresses a strong sense of disapproval, condemnation and outrage.

Leo Rosten in The Joys of Yiddish defines chutzpah as "gall, brazen nerve, effrontery, incredible 'guts', presumption plus arrogance such as no other word and no other language can do justice to". In this sense, chutzpah expresses both strong disapproval and condemnation. In the same work, Rosten also defines the term as "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."

Chutzpah amounts to a total denial of personal responsibility, which renders others speechless and incredulous ... one cannot quite believe that another person totally lacks common human traits like remorse, regret, guilt, sympathy and insight. The implication is at least some degree of psychopathy in the subject, as well as the awestruck amazement of the observer at the display.

The cognate of in Classical Arabic, does not mean "impudence" or "cheekiness" or anything similar, but rather "sound judgment".

In Rabbinical literature
Rabbi Harold M. Schulweis distinguishes the meaning of chutzpah as stubbornness and contrariness from what he calls a tradition of "spiritual audacity" or "chutzpah klapei shmaya":

We are conventionally raised to believe that Jewish faith demands unwavering obedience to the law and the *law-giver. That attitude tends to cultivate a temperament of compliance and passivity. For conventional thinking, "talking back to God" smacks of heresy. But a significant genre of religious, moral and spiritual audacity toward the divine authority—"chutzpah klapei shmaya"—finds a place of honor in Jewish religious thought.

As an example, Schulweis cites a case where Moses argues with God about the justice of His commands:

For Moses, that God should "visit the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generation" (Exod. 20:5) is an unacceptable form of group punishment akin to the morally indiscriminate punishment of Sodom. Challenging God's pronouncement of the punishment of the sons for the sins of the fathers, Moses argues with God, against God, and in the name of God. Moses engages God with fierce moral logic:

Sovereign of the Universe, consider the righteousness of Abraham and the idol worship of his father Terach. Does it make moral sense to punish the child for the transgressions of the father? Sovereign of the Universe, consider the righteous deeds of King Hezekiah, who sprang from the loins of his evil father King Achaz. Does Hezekiah deserve Achaz's punishment? Consider the nobility of King Josiah, whose father Amnon was wicked. Should Josiah inherit the punishment of Amnon? (Num. Rabbah, Hukkat XIX, 33)

Trained to view God as an unyielding authoritarian proclaiming immutable commands, we might expect that Moses will be severely chastised for his defiance. Who is this finite, errant, fallible, human creature to question the explicit command of the author of the Ten Commandments? The divine response to Moses, according to the rabbinic moral imagination, is arresting:

By your life Moses, you have instructed Me. Therefore I will nullify My words and confirm yours. Thus it is said, "The fathers shall not be put to death for the children, neither shall the children be put to death for the fathers."

Contemporary usage

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Judge Alex Kozinski and Eugene Volokh in an article entitled Lawsuit Shmawsuit, note the rise in use of Yiddish words in legal opinion. They note that chutzpah has been used 231 times in American legal opinions, 220 of those after 1980.[9] Chutzpah first appeared in a Supreme Court decision in 1998, in National Endowment for the Arts v. Finley, when Justice Antonin Scalia used it to describe the NEA's brazenness in asking for government funding.

In the Bollywood movie Haider (2014) by Vishal Bharadwaj, a modern-day interpretation of Hamlet set against the backdrop of Kashmir in the midst of political conflict, the protagonist uses the word chutzpah which they pronounce as instead of or to describe India's way of treating the people of Kashmir since the beginning of the conflict. This pronunciation sounds more like Indian slang.

The Polish word hucpa  is also derived from this term, although its meaning is closer to 'insolence' or 'arrogance', and so it is typically used in a more negative sense instead of denoting a positive description of someone's audacity.

Similarly, the German form of chutzpah is Chuzpe.

'Chutzpah' is a primary statistic for player and non-player characters in the roleplaying game Paranoia.


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audacity

NOUN
a willingness to take bold risks:
"her audacity came in handy during our most recent emergency"
SIMILAR:
boldness
daring
fearlessness
intrepidity
bravery
courage

rude or disrespectful behavior; impudence:
"she had the audacity to pick up the receiver and ask me to hang up"
SIMILAR:
impudence
impertinence
insolence
presumption

Translate audacity to

German
NOUN
Audacity
Kuehnheit
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WORD OF THE DAY
November 9, 2023
  audacious 
 
adjective | aw-DAY-shus

 
What It Means
 
Audacious is an adjective used to describe people, or things that people make or do, that are confident and daring, or bold and surprising.
 
// She made the audacious decision to quit her job.
 
// The band has been making original and creative music for well over ten years, but their latest album is their most audacious to date.
 

Nailed this quiz? We have plenty more to try! TAKE ME THERE 
 
Examples of AUDACIOUS
 
“My auntie Carolyn was a teacher at Bunker Hills School in Washington, DC. She was an audacious teacher, and invited the Queen of England to her classroom—and the Queen came, twice. Teachers like that make such a difference.” — Sheryl Lee Ralph, quoted in Ebony, 16 Aug. 2023

 
Did You Know?
 
Fortune favors the bold—or, as ancient Romans are known to have said, “audentes Fortuna iuvat.” Audentes here is the present participle of the Latin verb aud;re, meaning “to dare,” a word that also led, via several etymological twists and turns through the centuries, to the English adjective audacious. When it first appeared in English in the mid-1500s, audacious meant “intrepidly daring,” a sense we still use today when we apply the word to various feats of derring-do and those who dare to do them. Since then it has developed several additional meanings, including the closely related “recklessly bold” and “marked by originality and verve,” as in “her audacious new album heralds the future of hip-hop.” Of course, with audacity (another aud;re descendent) comes risk that fortune, despite the maxim, doesn’t always favor: as fungi foragers know, there are sagacious mushroomers, and audacious mushroomers, but there are no sagacious audacious mushroomers.