From Middle English corage, from Old French corage (French courage), from Vulgar Latin *corāticum, from Latin cor.

• (British) IPA: /ˈkʌɹ.ɪdʒ/
• (America) IPA: /ˈkʌɹ.ɪd͡ʒ/, /ˈkɝ.ɪd͡ʒ/

courage (uncountable)

1. The quality of being confident, not afraid or easily intimidated, but without being incautious or inconsiderate.
   • 1860, R[alph] W[aldo] Emerson, “Essay IV. Culture.”, in The Conduct of Life, Boston, Mass.: Ticknor and Fields, →OCLC ↗, page 120 ↗:

     A great part of courage is the courage of having done the thing before.

   • 1813 January 26, [Jane Austen], Pride and Prejudice: […], volume (please specify |volume=I to III), London: […] [George Sidney] for T[homas] Egerton, […], →OCLC ↗:

     There is a stubbornness about me that never can bear to be frightened at the will of others. My courage always rises at every attempt to intimidate me.

   It takes a lot of courage to be successful in business.

2. The ability to overcome one's fear, do or live things which one finds frightening.

   He plucked up the courage to tell her how he felt.

   • 1897, Mark Twain [pseudonym; Samuel Langhorne Clemens], “[Pudd’nhead Wilson] Chapter XII”, in The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson: And the Comedy Those Extraordinary Twins, Hartford, Conn.: American Publishing Company, →OCLC ↗, page 155 ↗:

     Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear—not absence of fear.

3. The ability to maintain one's will or intent despite either the experience of fear, frailty, or frustration; or the occurrence of adversity, difficulty, defeat or reversal. Moral fortitude.
   • 1942, C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters:

     “Courage is not simply one of the virtues but the form of every virtue at the testing point, which means at the point of highest reality.”

   • 1960 July 11, Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, Philadelphia, Pa., New York, N.Y.: J[oshua] B[allinger] Lippincott Company, →OCLC ↗:

     I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It's when you know you're licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what.

   • 2008, Maya Angelou, address for the 2008 Cornell University commencement

     Courage is the most important of all the virtues because without courage, you can't practice any other virtue consistently.

• See also Thesaurus:courage

• cardiac

• French: bravoure, courage, cœur, vaillance
• German: Courage, Herz, Mut, Tapferkeit
• Italian: coraggio
• Portuguese: coragem, coração, valentia
• Russian: сме́лость
• Spanish: coraje, valor, valentía

• French: courage
• German: Mut, Beherztheit
• Portuguese: coragem, audácia
• Russian: му́жество
• Spanish: valor, valentía

courage (courages, present participle couraging; simple past and past participle couraged)

1. (obsolete) To encourage. [15th]
   • 1485, Sir Thomas Malory, chapter [https://quod.lib.umich.edu/c/cme/MaloryWks2/1:21.10?rgn=div2;view=fulltext X], in Le Morte Darthur, book XIX:

     And wete yow wel sayd kynge Arthur vnto Vrres syster I shalle begynne to handle hym and serche vnto my power not presumyng vpon me that I am soo worthy to hele youre sone by my dedes / but I wille courage other men of worshyp to doo as I wylle doo

     (please add an English translation of this quotation)

   • 1530, William Tyndale, An Answer unto Sir Thomas More's Dialogue:

     Paul writeth unto Timothy, to instruct him, to teach him, to exhort, to courage him, to stir him up,