belief in others
1 [U] ~ (in sb/sth) the feeling that you can trust, believe in and be sure about the abilities or good qualities of sb/sth:
The players all have confidence in their manager. * A fall in unemployment will help to restore consumer confidence. * a lack of confidence in the government * The new contracts have undermined the confidence of employees. * She has every confidence in her students' abilities.
seealsoVOTEOFCONFIDENCE, VOTEOFNOCONFIDENCE
belief in yourself
2 [U] a belief in your own ability to do things and be successful:
He answered the questions with confidence. * Women often lose confidence when they stop work to have a baby. * He gained confidence when he went to college. * She suffers from a lack of confidence. * While girls lack confidence, boys often overestimate their abilities. * I didn't have any confidence in myself at school.
feeling certain
3 [U] the feeling that you are certain about sth:
They could not say with confidence that he would be able to walk again after the accident. * No one can predict with complete / total confidence what will happen in the financial markets. * He expressed his confidence that they would win.
trust
4 [U] a feeling of trust that sb will keep information private:
Eva told me about their relationship in confidence. * This is in the strictest confidence. * It took a long time to gain her confidence (= make her feel she could trust me).
a secret
5 [C] (formal) a secret that you tell sb:
The girls exchanged confidences. * I could never forgive Mike for betraying a confidence.
IDIOMS
be in sb's confidence to be trusted with sb's secrets:
He is said to be very much in the President's confidence.
take sb into your confidence to tell sb secrets and personal information about yourself:
She took me into her confidence and told me about the problems she was facing.
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About this entry
This is a English–English dictionary entry.
Sourced from Main Dictionary in Lughet's collection.
This word also appears under other sources in Lughet's collection — see the list below.
Where does this definition of confidence come from?
This entry for confidence is sourced from Main Dictionary, one of the dictionaries and corpora merged into Lughet.
Is confidence a noun, verb, or something else?
In this entry, confidence is tagged as noun.
Does confidence appear elsewhere on Lughet?
Yes — confidence appears under other sources or language pairs in Lughet's collection. See the list below.
What is Lughet?
Lughet is a free trilingual dictionary covering nearly five million entries across Uyghur, Chinese, and English, drawn from more than ten source dictionaries and corpora.