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 the Sephardic counterpart to Yiddish, Judaeo-Spanish or "Ladino", is printed in Hebrew script.) The Western Yiddish dialect—sometimes pejoratively labeled "Mauscheldeutsch", i. e. "Moses German"—declined in the 18th century, as the Age of Enlightenment and the "Haskalah" led to a view of Yiddish as a corrupt dialect. A "Maskil" (from the same root word as "Haskalah") would write about and promote acclimatization to the outside world. Jewish children began attending secular schools where the primary language spoken and taught was German, not Yiddish. Owing to both assimilation to German and the revival of Hebrew, Western Yiddish survived only as a language