chutzpah
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It's the Word of the Day podcast for February 18th.

They're part of the more than 300,000 jobs BP supports across the country. Learn more at BP.com slash investing in America. Today's word is chutzpah, also pronounced chutzpah and spelled C-H-U-T-Z-P-A-H. Chutzpah is a noun.

It's a shameless or disrespectful boldness often paired with reckless self-confidence. Someone with chutzpah dares to do or say things that seem shocking to others. Here's the word used in a sentence from Vanity Fair by Julie Miller.

Anne Hathaway is not easily talked out of things she believes in. She took drama classes, understudied future Tony winner Laura Benanti in a production of Jane Eyre at 14, and had the chutzpah to write to an agent with her headshot at 15.

The word chutzpah has been boldly circulating through English since the mid-1800s. It comes to English from Yiddish, which in turn took the word from Hebrew. The "ch" in chutzpah indicates a rasping sound from the back of the throat that exists in many languages, including Yiddish.

That sound is not part of English phonology, so it follows that the C is sometimes dropped in both the pronunciation and the spelling of the word. Some speakers of Yiddish feel that chutzpah has been diluted in English use, no longer properly conveying the monumental nature of the gall that is implied. A classic example can be found in Leo Rosten's 1968 book, The Joys of Yiddish.

which defines chutzpah 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. With your word of the day, I'm Peter Sokolowski. Visit Merriam-Webster.com today for definitions, wordplay, and trending word lookups.