From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishcowardcow‧ard /ˈkaʊəd $ -ərd/ noun [countable] BRAVEsomeone who is not at all brave Try it. Don’t be such a coward. —cowardly adjective a cowardly attack on a defenceless man
Examples from the Corpus
coward• Perhaps I should have turned back but I didn't want to be known as a quitter and a coward.• He called me a coward, because I wouldn't fight.• Why would anyone want to go and see a man who was a coward?• Any coward with a grudge could do this to us anywhere, any time.• She knew she was an awful coward about going to the dentist.• You're a damned little coward, Hilary, and I don't know why I bother with you!• Many civil servants are moral cowards.• I may even go so far as to say that I prefer cowards to heroes, given a choice.• They're cowards - they don't have the guts to confront me personally.• The cabdrivers had run away, the cowards.• Alan was a kind of unflinching coward who lived into an era of absolute cowards.Origin coward (1200-1300) Old French coart, from coe “tail”; probably from the idea of an animal with its tail between its legs 