CONFIDENCE

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does confidence mean? 

• CONFIDENCE (noun)
  The noun CONFIDENCE has 5 senses:

1. freedom from doubt; belief in yourself and your abilities

2. a feeling of trust (in someone or something)

3. a state of confident hopefulness that events will be favorable

4. a trustful relationship

5. a secret that is confided or entrusted to another

  Familiarity information: CONFIDENCE used as a noun is common.

 Dictionary entry details 

• CONFIDENCE (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Freedom from doubt; belief in yourself and your abilities

Classified under:

Nouns denoting cognitive processes and contents

Synonyms:

assurance; authority; confidence; self-assurance; self-confidence; sureness

Context example:

she spoke with authority

Hypernyms ("confidence" is a kind of...):

certainty (the state of being certain)

Attribute:

certain; sure (having or feeling no doubt or uncertainty; confident and assured)

incertain; uncertain; unsure (lacking or indicating lack of confidence or assurance)

Derivation:

confident (having or marked by confidence or assurance)

Sense 2

Meaning:

A feeling of trust (in someone or something)

Classified under:

Nouns denoting feelings and emotions

Context example:

confidence is always borrowed, never owned

Hypernyms ("confidence" is a kind of...):

security (freedom from anxiety or fear)

Attribute:

confident (having or marked by confidence or assurance)

diffident; shy; timid; unsure (lacking self-confidence)

Antonym:

diffidence (lack of self-confidence)

Derivation:

confidential (denoting confidence or intimacy)

Sense 3

Meaning:

A state of confident hopefulness that events will be favorable

Classified under:

Nouns denoting stable states of affairs

Context example:

public confidence in the economy

Hypernyms ("confidence" is a kind of...):

hopefulness (full of hope)

Derivation:

confident (having or marked by confidence or assurance)

Sense 4

Meaning:

A trustful relationship

Classified under:

Nouns denoting stable states of affairs

Synonyms:

confidence; trust

Context example:

he betrayed their trust

Hypernyms ("confidence" is a kind of...):

friendly relationship; friendship (the state of being friends (or friendly))

Derivation:

confide (confer a trust upon)

confidential (entrusted with private information and the confidence of another)

Sense 5

Meaning:

A secret that is confided or entrusted to another

Classified under:

Nouns denoting communicative processes and contents

Context example:

the priest could not reveal her confidences

Hypernyms ("confidence" is a kind of...):

secret (something that should remain hidden from others (especially information that is not to be passed on))

Derivation:

confide (reveal in private; tell confidentially)

confidential ((of information) given in confidence or in secret)

 Context examples 

He added privately that we were now approaching the door of the unknown country, and that the fewer whom we took into our confidence the better it would be.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

You have plenty of cosmic support, so venture forth with confidence.

(AstrologyZone.com, by Susan Miller)

"What is it, deary?" asked Mrs. March, holding out her hand, with a face which invited confidence.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

He went about in it with greater confidence, with a feeling of prowess that had not been his in the days before the battle with the lynx.

(White Fang, by Jack London)

When I remembered how far I had once been admitted to his confidence, I could hardly comprehend his present frigidity.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

All you need is confidence in yourself.

(The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, by L. Frank Baum)

"It is going extremely fast and on such a trajectory that we can say with confidence that this object is on its way out of the solar system and not coming back."

(Small Asteroid or Comet 'Visits' from Beyond the Solar System, NASA)

The study papers, which were submitted for review on May 19, were kept in confidence allowing companies to fix the security flaw.

(Digital security researchers publicly reveal vulnerability in WPA2 WiFi protocol, Wikinews)

"That gives us a high degree of confidence that microbes are eating it."

(Microbes in underground aquifers beneath deep-sea Mid-Atlantic Ridge 'chow down' on carbon, National Science Foundation)

The Spitzer data increased scientists' confidence that TOI 700 d is a real planet and sharpened their measurements of its orbital period by 56% and its size by 38%.

(NASA Planet Hunter Finds Earth-Size Habitable-Zone World, NASA)