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they believe and deserve no
respect; indeed, their lack of heart
inspires contempt. Use craven to
describe cowardly people, actions,
speeches, and decisions.z A good way to remember craven
is to link it to Edgar Allan Poe’s
poem “The Raven.” The narrator
of the poem is overcome with
fear by the knocking that comes at
his door: And the silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain
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So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating
“’Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door—
Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door;—
This it is and nothing more.”Pusillanimous (adjective)Cowardly; lacking courage or resolution; fainthearted.z We can put pusillanimous in context with a quote from Herman
Melville: “Nobody is so heartily despised as a pusillanimous,
lazy, good-for-nothing, land-lubber; a sailor has no bowels of
compassion for him.” This quote captures the connotation of
shameful cowardice carried by pusillanimous.z Pusillanimous comes from the Latin words pusillus, meaning
“very weak, little,” and animus, meaning “spirit, courage.” Based
on these root meanings, pusillanimous means “weak or little spirit
or courage.”7RUHPHPEHUcraven, link
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$OODQ3RH¶V³7KH5DYHQ ́© Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division/ LC-USZ62-10610.