• (British) enPR: kou'əd, IPA: /ˈkaʊəd/
• (America) enPR: kou'ərd, IPA: /ˈkaʊɚd/

coward (plural cowards)

1. A person who lacks courage.
   • 1856: Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary, Part II Chapter IV, translated by Eleanor Marx-Aveling

     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.

• chicken
• scaredy pants
• yellowbelly
• See also Thesaurus:coward

• French: couard, couarde, poltron, poltronne, froussard, froussarde, lâche
• German: Feigling, (colloquial) Angsthase, (slang) Schisser, Schisserin, Hosenscheißer (colloquial), Warmduscher (colloquial)
• Italian: codardo, pusillanime, vigliacco, vile, coniglio
• Portuguese: covarde
• Russian: трус
• Spanish: cobarde, gallina

coward

1. Cowardly.
   • 1603, Michel de Montaigne, chapter 17, in John Florio, transl., The Essayes, […], book II, printed at London: By Val[entine] Simmes for Edward Blount […], OCLC 946730821 ↗:

     It is a coward and servile humour, for a man to disguise and hide himselfe under a maske, and not dare to shew himselfe as he is.

   • circa 1605 William Shakespeare, King Lear, Act II, Scene 4,

     He rais’d the house with loud and coward cries.

   • 1709, Matthew Prior, “Celia to Damon” in Poems on Several Occasions, London: Jacob Tonson, 2nd edition, p. 89,

     Invading Fears repel my Coward Joy;

     And Ills foreseen the pleasant Bliss destroy.

2. (heraldry, of a lion) Borne in the escutcheon with his tail doubled between his legs.

coward (cowards, present participle cowarding; past and past participle cowarded)

1. (transitive, obsolete) To intimidate.
   • , John Chalkhill, Thealma and Clearchus

     The first he coped with was their captain, whom / His sword sent headless to seek out a tomb. / This cowarded the valour of the rest, […]

1. Surname