Definitions

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adjective obsolete Daring or warlike.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective obsolete daring; warlike

Etymologies

Sorry, no etymologies found.

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Examples

  • All of which confirmed my conclusion that they were under the misapprehension which has sustained me for a lifetime - they truly believed my heroic reputation, and thought I was the kind of derring-do idiot who'd answer the call of duty and danger like a good 'un, itching to fight the good fight.

    Watershed 2010

  • Phillips spent two years as a Jewish war refugee in England, wondering if her parents were still alive, and ultimately escaping to the U.S. with the kind of derring-do you might find in Señorita Rio, an immigrant turned spy who became Phillips's most celebrated comic creation.

    A Real-Life Comic Book Superhero 2010

  • All of which confirmed my conclusion that they were under the misapprehension which has sustained me for a lifetime - they truly believed my heroic reputation, and thought I was the kind of derring-do idiot who'd answer the call of duty and danger like a good 'un, itching to fight the good fight.

    Flashman And The Tiger Fraser, George MacDonald, 1925- 1999

  • My friends will undoubtedly be happily reading children's books to their kids tonight that celebrate rebelliousness and rule-breaking and derring-do (Robin Hood anyone?) in the face of unjust authority.

    Aargh? Roger Sutton 2009

  • Concentrating on dramatic and action-filled tales filled with heroic battles, moral dilemmas, and chivalric derring-do, the images in history manuscripts help us to understand the broader conception of history in the Middle Ages, which often encompassed material that we would now consider myth, romance, or even outright invention.

    Elizabeth Morrison: A Getty Curator Discusses Manuscripts, France, And The Middle Ages: Imagining The Past Elizabeth Morrison 2011

  • But I imagined myself not getting a tattoo at twenty-eight; time passes; by the age of thirty-five, I would (I imagined) no longer have the youthful derring-do to go ahead and get the tattoo.

    Tattoo in Japan Boing Boing 2009

  • Space program analysts say the flurry of interest is an aberrant blip destined to fade as NASA spends the next decade focused on engineering instead of derring do.

    Friday shuttle launch drawing sky-high interest 2011

  • The tales of OSS derring-do — one agent, Virginia Hall, had a prosthetic leg from a prewar hunting accident but was still parachuted into Occupied France — are thrilling and none more so than the elaborate effort, in July 1941, to burgle the safe in the Spanish embassy in Washington for the diplomatic codebooks.

    The Spymaster's Spymaster Andrew Roberts 2011

  • Space program analysts say the flurry of interest is an aberrant blip destined to fade as NASA spends the next decade focused on engineering instead of derring do.

    Friday shuttle launch drawing sky-high interest 2011

  • Concentrating on dramatic and action-filled tales filled with heroic battles, moral dilemmas, and chivalric derring-do, the images in history manuscripts help us to understand the broader conception of history in the Middle Ages, which often encompassed material that we would now consider myth, romance, or even outright invention.

    Elizabeth Morrison: A Getty Curator Discusses Manuscripts, France, And The Middle Ages: Imagining The Past Elizabeth Morrison 2011

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