Chutzpah chutzpah is "chuzpe". Chutzpah 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 through Ameridish 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. In Hebrew, "chutzpah" is used indignantly, to describe someone who has overstepped the boundaries of accepted
Yiddish of the Zionist movement, led to a decline in the use of Eastern Yiddish. However, the number of speakers within the widely dispersed Haredi (mainly Hasidic) communities is now increasing. Although used in various countries, Yiddish has attained official recognition as a minority language only in Moldova, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Netherlands, and Sweden. Reports of the number of current Yiddish speakers vary significantly. "Ethnologue" estimates, based on publications through 1991, that there were at that time 1.5 million speakers of Eastern Yiddish, of which 40% lived in Ukraine, 15% in Israel, and 10% in the United States. The Modern