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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.
Examples of poltroon in a Sentence
Kevin D. Williamson, National Review, 15 Jan. 2021
When did conservatives become such a miserable gaggle of public poltroons?
—Charles P. Pierce, Esquire, 13 Apr. 2017
Cite this Entry
“Poltroon.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/poltroon. Accessed 15 Jul. 2025.
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