cower
Pronunciation Verb
This text is extracted from the Wiktionary and it is available under the CC BY-SA 3.0 license | Terms and conditions | Privacy policy 0.002
Pronunciation Verb
cower (cowers, present participle cowering; past and past participle cowered)
- (intransitive) To crouch or cringe, or to avoid or shy away from something, in fear.
- He'd be useless in war. He'd just cower in his bunker until the enemy came in and shot him, or until the war was over.
- 1700, John Dryden, "The Cock and the Fox ↗", in Fables, Ancient and Modern, published March 1700:
- Our dame sits cowering o'er a kitchen fire.
- (intransitive, archaic) To crouch in general.
- 1764, Oliver Goldsmith, The Traveller (poem):
- Some sterner virtues o’er the mountain’s breast
May sit, like falcons, cowering on the nest
- Some sterner virtues o’er the mountain’s breast
- 1801, Robert Southey, Thalaba the Destroyer:
- The mother bird had mov’d not,
But cowering o’er her nestlings,
Sate confident and fearless,
And watch’d the wonted guest.
- The mother bird had mov’d not,
- 1764, Oliver Goldsmith, The Traveller (poem):
- (transitive) To cause to cower; to frighten into submission.
- French: recroqueviller, tapir
- German: kauern
- Portuguese: encolher
- Russian: съёживаться
- Spanish: encogerse, amilanarse
cower (cowers, present participle cowering; past and past participle cowered)
- (obsolete, transitive) To cherish with care.
This text is extracted from the Wiktionary and it is available under the CC BY-SA 3.0 license | Terms and conditions | Privacy policy 0.002