as in afraid
having or showing a shameful lack of courage
vented his spleen at those milk-livered men who refused to fight for king and country
Synonyms & Similar Words
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Antonyms & Near Antonyms
Example Sentences
Recent Examples of Synonyms for milk-livered
Adjective
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Don’t be afraid to wear your heart on your sleeve.—
Tarot.com,
New York Daily News,
8 Apr. 2026 -
Is the economy struggling, with layoffs and wary investors afraid to lend?—
Alex Mayyasi,
NPR,
7 Apr. 2026
Adjective
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Flavors include Superman, moose tracks, Dubai chocolate and Play Dough (bright yellow vanilla ice cream with chunks of red and blue cookie dough).—
Jenna Thompson
April 8,
Kansas City Star,
8 Apr. 2026
-
Consider the orange and yellow ‘Gold Nugget’ or the silver-haired ‘Cobweb’ varieties for an eye-catching display.—
ABC News,
ABC News,
7 Apr. 2026
Adjective
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In many cases, people deported leave behind family members who may be too young or scared to speak because of their own undocumented status.—
Mathew Miranda,
Sacbee.com,
6 Apr. 2026
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At McWilliams Cemetery, located at West Armuchee Road and Smith Gap Road, officers found two emaciated dogs running loose — scared and hungry.—
Samantha Agate,
Miami Herald,
6 Apr. 2026
Adjective
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Chesney became frightened, scaled the enclosure wall and hopped over the fence.—
Taylor Ardrey,
USA Today,
1 Apr. 2026
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The team caught up with Chesney on Wednesday and again Thursday night, but Johnson said the frightened kangaroo slipped away — once by jumping into a cold river — and Johnson lost track on the drone.—
John O'Connor,
Fortune,
30 Mar. 2026
Adjective
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Orion is a tight space for four people to navigate, so the crew members have a careful choreography to maximize the data the astronauts can gather.—
Meghan Bartels,
Scientific American,
4 Apr. 2026
-
Through careful tuning of an extended Kalman filter and by taking advantage of bamboo’s natural vibration-damping properties, the system slashes control latency from 15–20 milliseconds down to just 8–10 milliseconds, enhancing responsiveness while keeping flight stable.—
Bojan Stojkovski,
Interesting Engineering,
4 Apr. 2026
Adjective
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Some also have lost lawyers, dismayed by the pusillanimous behavior of their leaders.—
Michael Hiltzik,
Los Angeles Times,
28 May 2025
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The second believed the United States could attain comprehensive security through military-technological means and saw diplomacy as a quixotic or pusillanimous enterprise that dishonored and weakened the country.—
A. Wess Mitchell,
Foreign Affairs,
22 Apr. 2025
Adjective
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That larger significance is remarkably unheroic and fatalistic.—
Gabriel Winslow-Yost,
Harper's Magazine,
23 Sep. 2024
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In the world of The Boys, based on the gleefully scabrous 2000s indie comic-book series of the same name by writer Garth Ennis and artist Darick Robertson, superheroes are real, pop-culture-dominating, and with rare exceptions, entirely unheroic.—
Brian Hiatt,
Rolling Stone,
13 June 2024
Adjective
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It’s populated by craven, cowardly traitors.—
Voice of the People,
New York Daily News,
25 Mar. 2026
-
Thomas Jefferson, the great hero of the Declaration of Independence, is shown as hypocritical, cowardly, manipulative, a schemer of every kind.—
David Frum,
The Atlantic,
25 Mar. 2026
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Cite this Entry
“Milk-livered.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/milk-livered. Accessed 10 Apr. 2026.
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