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I think dareness is not the word, since it doesn't appear in Thesaurus. What the common noun? Example sentence:

The woman suddenly kissed the man. That put him into a __-induced stupor.

3 Answers 3

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Daringness (or just daring) would be the noun forms you're looking for, but you might try "boldness" instead.

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Something is daring if it's boldly assertive in nature. A person can be daring, and a person's actions can be described as daring, but you can't say "X is affected by something being boldly assertive" with anything derived from dare.

By might save the day here, and while stupor induced by daring will not work (because it's not clear whose daring), stupor induced by her daring would. It will sound rather "deadpan" unless you can put an adjective in front of stupor:

The woman suddenly kissed the man. That put him into a swooning stupor induced by her daring.

This would sound better:

The woman suddenly kissed the man, him then being induced to stupor by her daring.

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  • 2
    In your last example it should be he and not him. Either way it's an awkward phrasing.
    – Robusto
    Dec 30, 2016 at 2:47
  • Is there a reason you stuck with the passive voice here? To me, "The woman suddenly kissed the man, her daring inducing him to stupor." sounds better than both.
    – hvd
    Dec 30, 2016 at 8:04
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It's not really clear if you intent the woman's kiss to make the man stronger (daring) or weaker (stupor)?

But, the word you may be looking for is

embolden

The woman's sudden kiss emboldened him to kiss her back.

Unless you do really mean

stupor

in which case

The woman's sudden kiss caused him to melt and become weak-kneeded.

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