Brazen

How to spell brazen

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce brazen

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does brazen mean?

1. adjectiveBoldly and openly disrespectful or shameless, without any attempt to hide wrongdoing.
2. verbTo face a difficult or embarrassing situation with bold confidence, usually in the phrase 'brazen it out'.

Brazen in a sentence

• adjective

  The auditors uncovered a brazen attempt to falsify the accounts.

• verb

  Rather than apologise, he decided to brazen the whole thing out.

• adjective

  Her brazen disregard for the safety rules alarmed the whole team.

• verb

  She chose to brazen out the criticism and carried on as normal.

Where does brazen come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word comes straight from Old English, where bræsen meant simply 'made of brass', built from bræs, the name of the metal, plus the suffix -en that turned a material into an adjective (the same pattern that gives us 'wooden' and 'golden'). For centuries it kept this literal sense, describing things cast or coated in brass. The figurative meaning grew naturally from the qualities of the metal: brass is hard, bright, and loud when struck, so by the 1500s 'brazen' was being used for people who were hard-faced, unblushing, and shameless. The vivid phrase 'brazen-faced', meaning having a face as bold and unyielding as brass, helped cement the modern sense of impudent boldness. The spelling preserves that old -en ending and the single z, which is the main trap, since the metal 'brass' has a double s that does not carry over.

How the word is built

• brass (from Old English bræs: the metal brass)
• -en (adjective suffix meaning 'made of')