Noun: coward
| Singular | coward |
| Plural | cowards |
Sample Sentences
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Near-synonyms: big baby, baby
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Cowards dye many times before their deaths, / The valiant neuer taſte of death but once: […] [c. 1599, William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Ivlivs Cæsar”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies: Published According to the True Originall Copies, London: Printed by Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, act II, scene ii, page 117, column 1:]
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1856: Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary, Part II Chapter IV, translated by Eleanor Marx-Aveling
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He tortured himself to find out how he could make his declaration to her, and always halting between the fear of displeasing her and the shame of being such a coward, he wept with discouragement and desire. Then he took energetic resolutions, wrote letters that he tore up, put it off to times that he again deferred.
Nouns inflected like coward
soldier's woundwort,
Nicosian,
whopper,
greypate,
tactile sign language,
chronotrope,
Rosie Lee,
dissentient,
photoinactivator,
sulphonediimine,
coastal waterfall,
residuary devise,
bituminization,
nitrosonaphthol,
smṛiti,
geosphere,
backscreen,
mensuralist,
flocculate,
flocculant, etc. (List truncated at 20 nouns)
Etymology
1. From Middle English coward, from Old French coart, cuard ( > French couard), from coue (“tail”), coe + -ard (pejorative agent noun suffix); coue, coe is in turn from Latin cauda.
2. The reference seems to be to an animal "turning tail", or having its tail between its legs, especially a dog. Compare the expression tail between one's legs. Displaced native Old English earg (surviving in northern dialect English argh).
3. Unrelated to cower, which is of Germanic origin. See: Middle English Nouns '
coward', French Nouns '
couard', Latin Nouns '
cauda'.
Verbs referencing "coward"
Catalan Nouns
covard.