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The oldest meaning of brazen, which traces back to the Old English word for “brass,” bræs, is a literal one: “made of brass” (you might on occasion encounter “brazen cups” or “brazen doors” in something you’re reading). Over the centuries, brazen picked up a number of figurative senses stemming from the physical properties of brass, from its strength to its sound to its color, as when poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote of “The glory that the wood receives, / At sunset, in its brazen leaves.” But it’s the hardness of brass that led eventually to the now common “shameless” meaning of brazen. Consider this passage written by the minister Thomas Doolittle in the late 1600s: “... though thinkest it no shame, or if thou dost, thou has a face of brass ... and blushest not ...” A face of brass, or a “brazen face” (a phrase recorded in writing as early as the late 1500s) is one that is more or less immobile, betraying no sign of shame of wrongdoing. Today, brazen is used not just for people who are openly shameless or disrespectful, but for openly shameless or disrespectful behavior, as in “a brazen disregard for the rules.”
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“Brazen.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/brazen. Accessed 12 Sep. 2026.
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