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craven

UK/ˈkɹeɪ.vən/US/ˈkɹeɪ.vən/
adjectiveC2Occasional — familiar, but not everyday · #9,257 of 15,258leans written

Craven means shamefully lacking in courage. A craven surrender, craven silence, craven and dishonest.

It is stronger than cowardly because it adds contempt: a craven act is one that shames the person who did it. It is literary and formal, and it appears in political writing far more often than in speech.

Definitions of craven

  1. 1adjectivecravenShamefully lacking in courage.C2

    “It was craven of him to blame his junior staff for his own mistake.”

craven is a quality.

Also accepted in games: cowardly

Remember it

CRAVen → hiding in the CAVE

When the fight starts he is already in the cave, and he stays there.

hooks ontocave

Where it comes from

Middle English cravant, probably from Old French cravante, defeated, from a Latin word meaning to break.

  1. Old French

    cravanté — defeated

  2. Middle English

    cravant

  3. English, today

    craven

Built from

  • creaunt · Middle English — defeated
  • craven · Middle English — to crave

From Middle English cravant, either borrowed from Old French cravanté (“defeated”), past participle of cravanter (ultimately from Latin crepare), or a modification of creaunt (“defeated”) after craven (“to crave”).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practise this word