Skip to main content
cowerer

cowerer

1 8.9
Someone who crouches or hides because they are afraid
  • noun
  • /ˈkaʊərər/
: cobarde
  • The bully laughed at the cowerers who huddled in the corner of the playground, too scared to stand up for themselves.

Examples

  • Mary Ellen was born into a large Irish-American family of loud arguers and punchers, and I came from a small English-heritage quartet of repressors and cowerers.

    Fiction book (2002)
  • Underground shelters were casually breached, their inhabitants as ruthlessly seined as the street-side cowerers.

    Fiction book (2001)
  • During the storm, many cowerers took refuge under the nearest staircase, afraid of the howling winds.

  • In the face of danger, he was always a cowerer, shrinking back whenever confrontation arose.

Antonyms

∞ 1.1

A person admired for brave actions and good qualities

How Fearful

coward
  • Offensive
358 2.3
cowerer
1 8.9

Surface Forms

cowerer singular
cowerers plural

Morphology

cowerer = cower (transparent) = cower + er

Formed by the verb 'cower' plus the agentive suffix '-er', yielding 'one who cowers', which is directly predictable.

Etymology

Cowerer comes from the verb cower, which means 'to crouch down' or 'shrink away' when you are afraid. So a cowerer is simply someone who does that, a person or animal who hides or trembles in fear, and the idea is similar to the word coward.