courage

The quality of being confident, not afraid or easily intimidated, but without being incautious or inconsiderate.

Noun

  1. The quality of being confident, not afraid or easily intimidated, but without being incautious or inconsiderate.
    • A great part of courage is the courage of having done the thing before. - 1860, R[alph] W[aldo] Emerson, “Essay IV. Culture.”, in The Conduct of Life, Boston, Mass.: Ticknor and Fields, →OCLC, page 120:
    • There is a stubbornness about me that never can bear to be frightened at the will of others. My courage always rises at every attempt to intimidate me. - 1813 January 27, [Jane Austen], Pride and Prejudice: […], volume...
    • It takes a lot of courage to be successful in business.
  2. The ability to overcome one's fear, do or live things which one finds frightening.
    • He plucked up the courage to tell her how he felt.
    • Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear—not absence of fear. - 1897, Mark Twain [pseudonym; Samuel Langhorne Clemens], “[Pudd’nhead Wilson] Chapter XII”, in The Tragedy of Pudd’nhead Wilson: And the Comedy Those...
  3. The ability to maintain one's will or intent despite either the experience of fear, frailty, or frustration; or the occurrence of adversity, difficulty, defeat or reversal; moral fortitude.
    • “Courage is not simply one of the virtues but the form of every virtue at the testing point, which means at the point of highest reality.” - 1942, C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters:
    • I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It's when you know you're licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter...
    • Courage isn't having the strength to go on - it is going on when you don't have strength. - 1993, Stanley P. Cornils, The Mourning After: How to Manage Grief Wisely:

Origin

From Middle English corage, from Old French corage (French courage), from Vulgar Latin *corāticum, from Latin cor (“heart”). Distantly related to cardiac (“of the heart”), which is from Greek, but from the same Proto-Indo-European root. Displaced Middle English elne, ellen, from Old English ellen (“courage, valor”).

Forms

courages

Synonyms

audacity balls bield boldhead boldness bravehood braveness bravery courage courageousness daring fearlessness grit guts heart intrepidity intrepidness mood nerve ovaries pecker pluck spunk steel

Antonyms

cowardice

Related

cardiac bravado chutzpah cojones heroism impudence mettle piss and vinegar pith spirit brave hero

Derived

courageless courage of one's convictions courageous digital courage discourage Dutch courage encourage gather up one's courage liquid courage pluck up one's courage screw up one's courage take courage take one's courage in both hands

Verb

  1. To encourage.
    • And wete yow wel sayd kynge Arthur vnto Vrres syster I shalle begynne to handle hym and serche vnto my power not presumyng vpon me that I am soo worthy to hele youre sone by my dedes / but I wille courage other men of...
    • Paul writeth unto Timothy, to instruct him, to teach him, to exhort, to courage him, to stir him up, - 1530, William Tyndale, An Answer unto Sir Thomas More's Dialogue:

Forms

courages couraging couraged

Related

fearlessness bield