Temerity is nerve to do something you have no business doing. Have the temerity to ask, sheer temerity, the temerity of it.
It appears almost only as to have the temerity to do something, and it is always said by somebody affronted. The Latin means rashness, so what the speaker calls temerity the doer would call courage.
1nountemerityNerve to do something you have no business doing.
“She had the temerity to tell the head chef how to cook his own soup.”
temerity is a boldness.
Latin temeritas means rashness, from temere, blindly or by chance.
Proto-Indo-European
*temH-
Latin
temeritās — chance, accident, rashness
Old French
temerité
Middle English
temerite
English, today
temerity
Built from
From Middle English temerite, temeryte, from Old French temerité, from Latin temeritās (“chance, accident, rashness”), from temere (“by chance, casually, rashly”). by surface analysis, temer(arious) + -ity.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA