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bold

adj
/ˈbəʊld/UK/ˈbɒld//boʊld/CA

Etymology

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”).

  1. derived from *bʰel-✻
  2. inherited from *balþaz✻ — “strong, bold”
  3. inherited from *balþ✻
  4. inherited from bald
  5. inherited from bold

Definitions

  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.
    • It would be extraordinarily bold of me to give it a try after seeing what has happened to you.

  2. Visually striking

    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. ›+ 12 more definitions

    1. Presumptuous, forward or impudent.

      • […] even the boldeſt and moſt affirmative Philoſophy, which has ever attempted to impoſe its crude Dictates and Principles on Mankind.

    2. Naughty

      Naughty; insolent; badly-behaved.

      • All of her children are terribly bold and never do as they are told.

    3. Full-bodied.

    4. Pornographic

      Pornographic; depicting nudity.

      • The government warned bus operators against continuing to show bold content on buses.

    5. 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 […]

    6. To make (a font or some text) bold.

      • Please bold all these subheads.

    7. 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.

    8. To become bold or brave.

    9. A dwelling

      A dwelling; habitation; building.

    10. A surname.

    11. A civil parish in the Metropolitan Borough of St Helens, Merseyside, England.

    12. Acronym of blood-oxygen-level dependent.

The neighborhood

Derived

blackboard bold, boldacious, bold as brass, boldface, bold-faced, boldfaced, bold film, boldhead, bold-hearted, boldish, boldly, bold move, Cotton, bold movie, boldship, bold star, demibold, extrabold, fortune favors the bold, fortune favours the bold, if I may be so bold, make bold, nonbold, overbold, semibold, superbold, ultrabold, unbold, nonbolded, unbolded

Vish — recursive loop

A definitional loop anchored at bold. Each word in the ring is defined by the next; follow the chain far enough and it folds back on itself. Scroll to it and watch.

01bold02daring03doughty04brave05superiority06superior07courageously08boldly

A definitional loop anchored at bold. Each word in the ring appears in the definition of the next; follow the chain far enough and it folds back on itself.

8 hops · closes at bold

curated · pre-corpus. live cycle detection across the full graph is the next major milestone.

sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA