have the guts

Idioms

Possess the courage, as in Does he have the guts to dive off the high board? This expression replaces the earlier and now obsolete sense of stomach as “courage,” a usage from the early 1500s. [Slang; late 1800s]

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

And maybe, one day, a thousand years in the future when we all lived on Mars and could shuttle back and forth like civilized people, I’d have the guts to text them first.

From Literature

Will this crop of European leaders have the guts?

From The Wall Street Journal

Fuzz guitars thrust the song forwards, as 32-year-old Sampa, full name Sampa Tembo, defiantly raps: "They don't have the guts to match my prowess."

From BBC

He added, “Let’s be honest — you became a millionaire off of her pain. And now, you want to act like the mature one, like the man who held it all together? If you’re going to write a book, at least have the guts to tell the truth about your part in it.”

From Salon

“They have to have the guts to put their stars on the table.”

From Los Angeles Times

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023