Did you know? Noun When you get down to synonyms, a "poltroon" is just a "chicken. Examples of poltroon in a Sentence Noun those poltroons in the state legislature who have caved in to bigotry on this important issue of basic civil rights Adjective a military commander who was so poltroon that he surrendered without having fired so much as a single shot.
Williamson, National Review , 15 Jan. First Known Use of poltroon Noun circa , in the meaning defined above Adjective , in the meaning defined above. History and Etymology for poltroon Noun Middle French poultron , from Old Italian poltrone , probably akin to poltro colt, ultimately from Latin pullus young of an animal — more at foal. Learn More About poltroon. Time Traveler for poltroon The first known use of poltroon was circa See more words from the same year.
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Don't Call Me a Loblolly, You Statistics for poltroon Look-up Popularity. Style: MLA. Thus the early use to mean a girl or woman, which would become the more recent chick. The first example we have of chicken meaning a coward comes in William Kemp's Nine Days' Wonder: "It did him good to have ill words of a hoddy doddy!
Dickens, Martin Chuzzlewit : "Why, what a chicken you are! You are not afraid of being robbed, are you? W Godwin, Caleb Williams : "You are not such a chicken as to suppose, if so be as you are innocent, that that will make your game altogether sure.
Adjectives meaning cowardly can be found in compounds, the first of which, chicken-hearted, seem to be the earliest example of the equation on record although this chicken began life as a hen :. There is also chicken-livered: Westmoreland Gazette 5 Sept, : "A hen-pecked husband, forsooth! And the term is especially well-known in the phrase to play chicken, a contest of nerve in which two cars drive towards either each other or an obstacle, cliff edge, etc — the loser being the driver who turns aside first; thus any form of foolish dare-devilry.
Jonathan slid off the swing and took a short cut through the house to the chicken coup. All rights reserved. Filters 0. Words form: chickened chickens. See word origin. The definition of chicken is a domestic bird used for meat and laying eggs, the meat that comes from such a bird, or is a slang term for someone who is fearful or cowardly. Any of various foolhardy competitions in which the participants persist in a dangerous course of action until one loses nerve and stops.
Afraid; cowardly. To act in a cowardly manner; lose one's nerve. Chickened out at the last moment. A common gallinaceous farm bird Gallus domesticus raised for its edible eggs or flesh; hen or rooster, esp. The flesh of this bird.
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