AUDACITY

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does audacity mean? 

• AUDACITY (noun)
  The noun AUDACITY has 2 senses:

1. fearless daring

2. aggressive boldness or unmitigated effrontery

  Familiarity information: AUDACITY used as a noun is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• AUDACITY (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Fearless daring

Classified under:

Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects

Synonyms:

audaciousness; audacity; temerity

Hypernyms ("audacity" is a kind of...):

boldness; daring; hardihood; hardiness (the trait of being willing to undertake things that involve risk or danger)

Derivation:

audacious (disposed to venture or take risks)

audacious (invulnerable to fear or intimidation)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Aggressive boldness or unmitigated effrontery

Classified under:

Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects

Synonyms:

audaciousness; audacity

Context example:

he had the audacity to question my decision

Hypernyms ("audacity" is a kind of...):

boldness; brass; cheek; face; nerve (impudent aggressiveness)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "audacity"):

assumption; effrontery; presumption; presumptuousness (audacious (even arrogant) behavior that you have no right to)

Derivation:

audacious (unrestrained by convention or propriety)

 Context examples 

It was like strong drink, firing him to audacities of feeling,—a drug that laid hold of his imagination and went cloud-soaring through the sky.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

With your usual happy mixture of cunning and audacity, you have got him.

(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Even they were frightened, not at the boy’s terrible words, but at his terrible audacity.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

Fanny looked very angry too, and her husband was all in a fright at his sister's audacity.

(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)

This man has been seen since the crime, for he was detected and pursued by Constable Walters on the same evening, when he had the audacity to revisit Wisteria Lodge.

(His Last Bow, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

“And nice people they were, who had the audacity to call him mad,” pursued my aunt.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

"Why, surely!" I cried, and gloried in my own audacity.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

I discerned he was now neither angry nor shocked at my audacity.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

Amy was learning this distinction through much tribulation, for mistaking enthusiasm for inspiration, she attempted every branch of art with youthful audacity.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

Then he dozed off to sleep and to dream dreams that for madness and audacity rivalled those of poppy-eaters.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)