Chutzpah is a Yiddish word meaning having gall … brazen nerve … effrontery… sheer guts… plus arrogance; it’s Yiddish and, as Leo Rosten writes, no other word, and no other language, can do it justice.

A little old lady sold pretzels on a street corner for a dollar each.
Every day a young man would leave his office building at lunch time
and as he passed the pretzel stand, he would leave her a dollar, but
never take a pretzel.

This offering went on for more than three years. The two of them
never spoke. One day as the young man passed the old lady’s stand
and left his dollar as usual, the pretzel lady spoke to him for the first
time in over three years. Without blinking an eye she said:

“They’re a dollar and a quarter now.”

🙂