Chutzpah 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 behavior. In traditional
Chutzpah Schulweis cites a case where Moses argues with God about the justice of His commands: Judge Alex Kozinski and Eugene Volokh in an article entitled "Lawsuit Shmawsuit", note the rise in use of Yiddish words in legal opinion. They note that "chutzpah" has been used 231 times in American legal opinions, 220 of those after 1980. "Chutzpah" first appeared in a Supreme Court decision in 1998, in National Endowment for the Arts v. Finley, when Justice Antonin Scalia used it to describe the NEA's brazenness in asking for government funding. In the movie Haider (2014) by Vishal Bharadwaj, a modern-day