Article: "Our Last, Best Hope"

As the time slips past, so does our common opportunity for "the change that matters."

Throughout the campaign, we have heard arguments and borne the heavy weight of decision. Will we seek peace or court further pain and disaster?

For my part, when Barack Obama spoke in Pueblo on this past Saturday, November 1, I found myself identifying ever more with the Obama and Biden message of hope.

Such hope, I believe, requires audacity such as Barack describes in his autobiographical book. Curious, is it not that "audacity" derives from the same root as the Latin? According to Merriam-Webster:

Main Entry: au·dac·i·ty Pronunciation: \o?-'da-s?-te\ Function: noun Inflected Form(s): plural au·dac·i·ties Etymology: Middle English audacite, from Latin audac-, audax Date: 15th century 1: the quality or state of being audacious: as a: intrepid boldness b: bold or arrogant disregard of normal restraints 2: an audacious act -usually used in plural synonyms see temerity

audacity: 1432, from M.L. audacitas "boldness," from L. audacis gen. of audax "brave," but more often "bold" in a bad sense, from audere "to dare, be bold."
presumption: c.1225, "seizure and occupation without right," also "taking upon oneself more than is warranted," from L.L. præsumptionem "confidence, audacity," in classical L., "a taking for granted, anticipation," from præsumere "to take beforehand," from præ "before" + sumere "to take." In Eng., the meaning "the taking of something for granted" is attested from c.1300. Presumptuous (c.1350) preserves the original sense, from O.Fr. presuntuex (12c.), from L.L. præsumptuosus (5c.), from L. præsumptionem.

You may be surprised to find earlier origins for "audacity," as was I...

I bow to the Yiddish now...
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Definition: Chutzpah

Chutzpah

Noun1. Aggressive boldness or unmitigated effrontery; "he had the audacity to question my decision".

Source: WordNet 1.7.1 Copyright © 2001 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

Synonyms: Chutzpah

Synonyms: audaciousness (n), audacity (n), hutzpa (n).

Crosswords: Chutzpah and Modern Usage: Chutzpah

Domain Usage Screenplays What guts! What spunk! What chutzpah! (The Adventures of Elmo in Grouchland; writing credit: Mitchell Kriegman)

Commercial Usage: Chutzpah

Hollywood Hoopla and Chutzpah 1910-1940 (reference) Mostly Chutzpah (reference)

Moving Ahead: with some luck and some chutzpah (reference)

Usage Frequency: Chutzpah:

"Chutzpah" is generally used as a noun (singular) -- approximately 100.00% of the time. "Chutzpah" is used about 18 times out of a sample of 100 million words spoken or written in English. Its rank is based on over 700,000 words used in the English language. Some parts-of-speech are not covered due to the samples used by the British National Corpus. (note: percents less than one-hundredth of one percent have been omitted)

Parts of Speech Percent Usage per
100 Million Words Rank in English

Noun (singular) 100% 18 82,615

Frequency of Internet Keywords: Chutzpah

The following statistics estimate the number of searches per day across the major English-language search engines as identified by various trade publications. Hyperlinks lead to commercial use of the expression at Amazon.com.

Modern Translations: Chutzpah

Language Translations for "chutzpah"; alternative meanings/domain in parentheses.
Russian ?????????? (cheek, cool cheek, impertinence, nerve), ???????? (assuredness, audaciousness, effrontery, face, hardihood, immodesty, impertinence, impudence, insolence, nerve, sauce, snoutiness).

And then we find Hispanic allusions as well as Turkish. This word really made its way round the Mediterranian sea!!!!....

Spanish personalidad (characters, personality, presence, self).

Turkish cüret (audacity, boldness, brass, chutzpa, daring, derring-do, forwardness, front, hardihood, hardiness, nerve, presumption, temerity, venture), küstahlik (arrogance, assuredness, audaciousness, audacity, back chat, backchat, boldness, brass, cheek, cheekiness, chutzpa, effrontery, flippancy, forwardness, gall, hardihood, hardiness, impertinence, insolence, lip, pertness, presumption, temerity).

Look still further, and you find yourself in the game-world of Scrabble:

Anagrams: Chutzpah

Words within the letters "a-c-h-h-p-t-u-z"
-1 letter: chutzpa, hutzpah.

-2 letters: hutzpa.

-3 letters: caput, chapt, hatch, hutch, patch.

-4 letters: caph, chap, chat, hath, haut, pact, path, phat, phut, putz, tach.

-5 letters: act, apt, cap, cat, cup, cut, hah, hap, hat, huh, hup, hut, pac, pah, pat, pht, put, tap, tau, tup, uta, zap.

Words containing the letters "a-c-h-h-p-t-u-z"
+1 letter: chutzpahs.

Alternative Orthography: Chutzpah

Mathematicians were conscious of it, as was DaVinci:

Hexadecimal (or equivalents, 770AD-1900s)

Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519; backwards)

And when it came to sign language, it appeared yet again!

American Sign Language (origins from 1620-1817 in Italy and, especially, France)

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Want more? How about semaphore for ships and navigation?

Semaphore (1791, in France) (references)

And for the blind:

Braille (1829, in France)

Morse Code (1836))-.-. .... ..- - --.. .--. .- ....

Dancing Men (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, 1903)

And then, inevitably, it got into binary code for computers:

Binary Code (1918-1938, probably earlier) 01000011 01101000 01110101 01110100 01111010 01110000 01100001 01101000

British Sign Language in the form of Fingerspelling, BSL; 1992, British Deaf Association Dictionary of British Sign Language...