Word.ws English Dictionary

bold as brass

bold as brass adjective: very bold; very forward or impudent.

Adjective

bold as brass

  1. (simile) Very bold; very forward or impudent.
    • The twins were now playing in the most approved brotherly fashion till at last Master Jacky who was really as bold as brass there was no getting behind that deliberately kicked the ball as hard as ever he could down towards the seaweedy rocks.1922 February 2, James Joyce, “[13]”, in Ulysses, Paris: Shakespeare and Company […], →OCLC
    • Well, she schlumphed her Vera down the screech at a rate of knots, zhooshed up the riah, checked the slap in the mirror behind the bar, straightened up one ogle fake riah that had come adrift, and bold as brass orderlied over as fast as she could manage in those bats and, in her best lips, asked...1997, James Gardiner, Who's a Pretty Boy Then?, page 123

Origin of bold as brass

Popularly supposed to have originated in reference to Brass Crosby, Lord Mayor of London in the 1770s, who was bold enough to defy the British parliament. However, this origin theory is dismissed by some as bogus.

Questions about bold as brass

What does bold as brass mean?
Bold as brass means very bold; very forward or impudent.
What part of speech is bold as brass?
Bold as brass is an adjective.

Words near bold as brass in the dictionary

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

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: bold as brass (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-au-bold as brass.ogg.

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