intrepid
adjective
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Don't Be Afraid to Learn About Intrepid
If you’re going to name a ship, whether an aircraft carrier or an interstellar starship, you could do worse than to name it the Intrepid, as both the United States military and Star Trek writers have done, respectively. (Technically “Intrepid” is a class of Trek ships that includes the Voyager, etc., but you get the drift.) Intrepid, after all, comes from the Latin word intrepidus, itself formed by the combination of the prefix in-, meaning “not,” and the adjective trepidus, meaning “alarmed.” When not designating sea or space vessels, intrepid aptly describes anyone—from explorers to reporters—who ventures bravely into unknown territory, though often you’ll see the word loaded with irony, as in “an intrepid couch surfer endeavored to watch every installment of the beloved sci-fi series in chronological order.” Intrepid word lovers may be interested to know of the existence of trepid, meaning “fearful”; it predates intrepid but most are too trepid (or simply unaware of its existence) to use it.
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Examples of intrepid in a Sentence
Jonathan Chait, New York Times Book Review, 3 Feb. 2008
Author and explorer Dame Freya Stark was one of the most intrepid adventurers of all time. (T. E. Lawrence, no slouch in the travel department himself, called her "gallant" and "remarkable.")
—Kimberly Robinson, Travel & Leisure, December 1999
Meanwhile, the intrepid Florentine traveler Marco Polo had been to China and brought back with him a noodle dish that became Italian pasta …
—Norman F. Cantor, The Civilization of the Middle Ages, 1993
an intrepid explorer who probed parts of the rain forest never previously attempted
Matt Grobar, Deadline, 30 Oct. 2024
Aping the fastidious wartime geolocation of videos shot by Islamic State forces, Russian military units, and other murderous pariahs, the intrepid Bellingcat detective further pin-points Ammon’s hidey-hole with the aid of mountaineering-app PeakVisor, Google Earth, and Google Street View.
—Matt Thompson, SPIN, 5 Nov. 2024
With a chopper, nothing is out of reach – and for the intrepid explorer yearning for true isolation, this is the stuff of dreams.
—Shaun Stanley, Travel + Leisure, 5 Nov. 2024
Many tabletop games feature intrepid heroes battling the minions of the Cthulhu Mythos.
—Rob Wieland, Forbes, 29 Oct. 2024
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Cite this Entry
“Intrepid.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/intrepid. Accessed 1 Dec. 2024.
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intrepid
adjective
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