to feel like a cur
- idiom
- Offensive
:
sentirse cobarde
- He began to feel like a cur for abandoning his teammates during the crisis.
Examples
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I feel like a cur for not standing up for my friend.
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After he backed down from the argument, he felt like a cur.
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After lying to her friend, she couldn't help but feel like a cur.
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Apologizing sincerely made him stop feeling like a cur about his earlier behavior.
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After betraying her trust, he couldn't help but feel like a cur for his actions.
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He<br>often feels like a cur when he thinks about how he treated his friends.
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When he chose not to defend his beliefs, he started to feel like a cur inside.
Antonyms
How Cowardly
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning is directly compositional: 'feel' (experience) + 'like' (as if) + 'a cur' (a cowardly/despicable person) yields 'experience oneself as a coward'. This structure matches ordinary comparative/simulational patterns found in many languages, so a B1 learner who knows the constituent meanings would readily infer the MWE meaning.
Etymology
Feel like a cur may come from the old word cur, which meant a low, mean dog. People compared a person's weak or shameful actions to that bad dog, so to feel like a cur came to mean to feel 'cowardly' or 'without honor'.