poltroon

1 of 2

noun

pol·​troon päl-ˈtrün 

: a spiritless coward : craven

poltroon

2 of 2

adjective

: characterized by complete cowardice

Did you know?

When you get down to synonyms, a poltroon is just a chicken. Barnyard chickens are fowl that have long been noted for timidity, and the name chicken has been applied to human cowards since the 17th century. Poltroon has been used for wimps and cravens for even longer, since the early 16th century at least. And if you remember that chickens are dubbed poultry, you may guess that the birds and the cowards are linked by etymology as well as synonymy. English picked up poltroon from Middle French, which in turn got it from Old Italian poltrone, meaning "coward." The Italian term has been traced to the Latin pullus, a root that is also an ancestor of pullet ("a young hen") and poultry.

Synonyms

Noun

• chicken
• coward
• craven
• cur
• dastard
• funk
• recreant
• sissy

Adjective

• chicken
• chicken-livered
• chickenhearted
• cowardly
• craven
• dastardly
• gutless
• lily-livered
• milk-livered [archaic]
• pusillanimous
• recreant
• spineless
• unheroic
• yellow

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

Recent Examples on the Web

Noun

And there’s the awkward fact of Giuliani’s having failed, in spite of his most abject scheming, to manage to overturn the presidential election that Donald Trump lost to a wobbly poltroon on the edge of 80. —Kevin D. Williamson, National Review, 15 Jan. 2021

Word History

Etymology

Noun

Middle French poultron, from Old Italian poltrone, probably akin to poltro colt, ultimately from Latin pullus young of an animal — more at foal

First Known Use

Noun

circa 1529, in the meaning defined above

Adjective

1645, in the meaning defined above

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Kids Definition

poltroon

noun

pol·​troon

päl-ˈtrün

: coward