Word.ws English Dictionary

bold

/ˈbɒld/UK/ˈbəʊld/

bold adjective: courageous, daring.

Adjective (1)

bold (comparative bolder or more bold, superlative boldest or most bold)

  1. Courageous, daring.
    • Bold deeds win admiration and, sometimes, medals.
    • Not unnaturally, “Auntie” took this communication in bad part. Thus outraged, she showed herself to be a bold as well as a furious virago. Next day she found her way to their lodgings and tried to recover her ward by the hair of the head.1918, W[illiam] B[abington] Maxwell, chapter XXII, in The Mirror and the Lamp, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC
  2. Visually striking; conspicuous.
    • the painter's bold use of colour and outline
  3. Having thicker strokes than the ordinary form of the typeface.
    • Many bold fonts are available on this computer.
    • In HTML, wrapping text in <b> and </b> tags produces bold text.
  4. Presumptuous, forward or impudent.
    • […] even the boldeſt and moſt affirmative Philoſophy, which has ever attempted to impoſe its crude Dictates and Principles on Mankind.1748, [David Hume], “Essay I. On the different Species of Philosophy.”, in Philosophical Essays Concerning Human Understanding, London: […] A[ndrew] Millar, […], →OCLC, part I, page 18
  5. (Ireland) Naughty; insolent; badly-behaved.
    • All of her children are terribly bold and never do as they are told.
  6. Full-bodied.
  7. (Philippines) Pornographic; depicting nudity.
    • The government warned bus operators against continuing to show bold content on buses.
  8. Steep or abrupt.
    • The grounds descend with a bold slope to the water's edge, and rise finely upwards above the mansion, abounding with fine trees, and ornamented by a range of building at a distance, in a corresponding style […]1808, William Bernard Cooke, A New Picture of the Isle of Wight, page 144

Verb

bold (third-person singular simple present bolds, present participle bolding, simple past and past participle bolded)

  1. (informal, transitive) To make (a font or some text) bold.
    • Please bold all these subheads.
    Synonyms:
    boldface, embolden
  2. (obsolete, transitive) To make bold or daring.
    • […] for this buſines,
      It touches vs, as France inuades our land
      Not bolds the King, with others whome I feare,
      Moſt iuſt and heauy cauſes make oppoſe.c. 1603–1606 (date written), [William Shakespeare], […] His True Chronicle Historie of the Life and Death of King Lear and His Three Daughters. […] (First Quarto), London: […] Nathaniel Butter, […]...
  3. (intransitive, obsolete) To become bold or brave.

Noun

bold (plural bolds)

  1. (obsolete) A dwelling; habitation; building.

Proper noun capitalized: Bold

Bold (countable and uncountable, plural Bolds)

  1. A surname.
  2. A civil parish in the Metropolitan Borough of St Helens, Merseyside, England.

Adjective (2) capitalized: BOLD

BOLD (not comparable)

  1. (abbreviation, acronym) Acronym of blood-oxygen-level dependent.

bold meaning in Hindi, Bengali, Assamese and Arabic

bold in Hindi

courageous, daring
साहसी sāhsī, निडर niḍar

bold in Bengali

courageous, daring
সাহসী śahośi

bold in Assamese

courageous, daring
সাহসী xahoxi

bold in Arabic

courageous, daring
جَرِيء jarīʔ, جَسُور jasūr
More languagesFewer languages
bold in Persian
جسور jasur, جسورانه jasurâne, پررنگ porrang, ضخیم zaxim
bold in Vietnamese
dũng cảm, can đảm, gan dạ

Examples of bold in a sentence

  • He needed something bold and dramatic to shore up his failing candidacy.
  • By default, the summary tasks are bold and outdented, and the subtasks are indented beneath them.
  • He managed to show a bold face despite his embarrassment.

All 40 example sentences with bold

Synonyms of bold

Antonyms

All synonyms and antonyms of bold

Forms of bold

Adjective
comparativebolder
comparativemore bold
superlativeboldest
superlativemost bold
Verb
third-person singular presentbolds
present participlebolding
past participlebolded
pastbolded
Noun
pluralbolds
alternative formbolde
alternative formboolde
Proper noun
pluralBolds

Origin of bold

From Middle English bold, bolde, bald, beald, from Old English bald, beald (“bold, brave, confident, strong, of good courage, presumptuous, impudent”), from Proto-West Germanic *balþ, from Proto-Germanic *balþaz (“strong, bold”), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰel-, *bʰlē- (“to bloat, swell, bubble”). Cognate with Dutch boud (“bold, courageous, fearless”), Middle High German balt (“bold”) (whence German bald (“soon”)), Swedish båld (“bold, dauntless”). Perhaps related to Albanian ballë (“forehead”) and Old Prussian balo (“forehead”). Compare typologically Italian affrontare (“to face, to deal with”), sfrontato (“bold, daring, insolent”), both from Latin frons (“forehead”).

From Middle English bolden, balden, from Old English baldian, bealdian, from Proto-Germanic *balþōną, related to *balþaz (see above). Cognate with Old High German irbaldōn (“to become bold, dare”).

From Middle English bold, from Old English bold, blod, bolt, botl (“house, dwelling-place, mansion, hall, castle, temple”), from Proto-Germanic *budlą, *buþlą (“house, dwelling”), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰew- (“to grow, wax, swell”) or *bʰuH-. Cognate with Old Frisian bold (“house”) (whence North Frisian bol, boel, bøl (“house”)), North Frisian bodel, budel (“property, inheritance”), Middle Low German būdel (“property, real estate”). Related to build.

Words formed from bold

Phrases with bold

Words that rhyme with bold

30 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about bold

What does bold mean?
Bold means courageous, daring.
What is bold in Hindi?
Bold in Hindi is साहसी (sāhsī), निडर (niḍar). See Bold meaning in Hindi.
What part of speech is bold?
Bold can be an adjective, a verb, a noun or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce bold?
Bold is pronounced /ˈbəʊld/ (UK).

Words near bold in the dictionary

  1. bolboceratid
  2. bolboceratids
  3. Bolbok
  4. Bolboși
  5. bolcane
  6. bold
  7. bold as brass
  8. bold film
  9. bold films
  10. bold move, Cotton
  11. bold movie

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: bold (page history and authors); Bold (page history and authors); BOLD (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-bold.ogg.

Cite this entry: “bold.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/bold. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.