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.
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
Cynthia Littleton, Variety, 16 Oct. 2025
When he is imprisoned on the basis of false testimony, with no hope of release, the intrepid Mercédès tries to break him out of jail.
—Melanie Goodfellow, Deadline, 14 Oct. 2025
After the protests over the Dakota Access Pipeline in 2016 and the racial injustice protests in 2020, more people and institutions questioned the narrative of Columbus as only an intrepid sailor and explorer, arguing for a more complete understanding of his historical impact.
—Terry Tang, Twin Cities, 13 Oct. 2025
Both of our intrepid prognosticators are … trying their best.
—Jon Greenberg, New York Times, 10 Oct. 2025
See All Example Sentences for intrepid
Cite this Entry
“Intrepid.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/intrepid. Accessed 31 Oct. 2025.
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intrepid
adjective
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