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COWARDLY
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (adjective)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Lacking courage; ignobly timid and faint-hearted
Example:
cowardly dogs, ye will not aid me then
Synonyms:
cowardly; fearful
Classified under:
Similar:
caitiff (despicably mean and cowardly)
chicken; chickenhearted; lily-livered; white-livered; yellow; yellow-bellied (easily frightened)
craven; recreant (lacking even the rudiments of courage; abjectly fearful)
dastard; dastardly (despicably cowardly)
faint; faint-hearted; fainthearted; timid (lacking conviction or boldness or courage)
funky (in a state of cowardly fright)
poltroon (characterized by complete cowardliness)
poor-spirited; pusillanimous; unmanly (lacking in courage and manly strength and resolution; contemptibly fearful)
Also:
afraid (filled with fear or apprehension)
timid (showing fear and lack of confidence)
ignoble (completely lacking nobility in character or quality or purpose)
Attribute:
cowardice; cowardliness (the trait of lacking courage)
Antonym:
brave (possessing or displaying courage; able to face and deal with danger or fear without flinching)
Derivation:
coward (a person who shows fear or timidity)
cowardliness (the trait of lacking courage)
Context examples:
How often she went I don’t know, but I followed her one day, and as I broke in at the door Fairbairn got away over the back garden wall, like the cowardly skunk that he was.
(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
This was cowardly: I should have appealed to your nobleness and magnanimity at first, as I do now—opened to you plainly my life of agony—described to you my hunger and thirst after a higher and worthier existence—shown to you, not my resolution (that word is weak), but my resistless bent to love faithfully and well, where I am faithfully and well loved in return.
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
Perhaps, after all, I was playing a cowardly part.
(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)
Beauty Smith regained his feet and came toward him, sniffling and cowardly.
(White Fang, by Jack London)
"You will be very welcome," answered Dorothy, "for you will help to keep away the other wild beasts. It seems to me they must be more cowardly than you are if they allow you to scare them so easily."
(The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, by L. Frank Baum)
There were cowardly suggestions that he should make believe, assume a part; and there were still more cowardly suggestions that warned him he would fail in such course, that his nature was not fitted to live up to it, and that he would make a fool of himself.
(Martin Eden, by Jack London)
Heaven knows, I cannot find it in my heart to blame you, but this much I will say, be it kind or unkind: when Captain Smollett was well, you dared not have gone off; and when he was ill and couldn't help it, by George, it was downright cowardly!
(Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson)
I was angry with myself for being caught in so cowardly a position, crouching on the floor.
(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)
One thing, in this connection, White Fang quickly learnt, and that was that a thieving god was usually a cowardly god and prone to run away at the sounding of the alarm.
(White Fang, by Jack London)
Martin came back and looked at the beady eyes, sneering, truculent, cowardly, and there leaped into his vision, as on a screen, the same eyes when their owner was making a sale in the store below—subservient eyes, smug, and oily, and flattering.
(Martin Eden, by Jack London)
