gutsy
adjective
Simple meaning
Showing courage, determination or boldness in the face of difficulties or danger.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
guhtseeSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈɡʌtˈsi
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
adjective
informal
Marked by courage and determination in the face of difficulties or danger; robust and uninhibited; it was a gutsy thing to do"
informal
Marked by courage, determination or boldness in the face of difficulties or danger; having guts.
of the voice
From the gut; deep and often coarse.
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: Marked by courage and determination in the face of difficulties or danger; robust and uninhibited; it was a gutsy thing to do"
Used this way, gutsy is a reasonably familiar word with a clearly warm, approving pull. It turns up most in everyday conversation and social media or informal writing contexts.
- Emotional tone
- Positive
- Formality
- Casual
- Intensity
- Moderate
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Brave and principled
- Usage feel
- Casual and conversational
Where it naturally appears
- Everyday conversation
- Social media/informal writing
Nearby words
- plucky , more casual, better suited to speech than writing
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.