timorous

• timourous (obsolete)
• timerous (obsolete)

Borrowed into late Middle English from Old French temoros, from Medieval Latin timorosus, from Latin timor (“fear”), from timeō (“I fear”). Doublet of timoroso.

• IPA^(key): /ˈtɪməɹəs/, /ˈtɪmɹəs/

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timorous (comparative more timorous, superlative most timorous)

1. Fearful; afraid; timid.
   • 1534 (date written; published 1553), Thomas More, “A Dyalogue of Comforte agaynste Tribulacyon, […]. XVI. Of Hym that were Moued to Kyl Himself by Illusion of the Dyuel, which He Rekened for a Reuelation.”, in Wyllyam Rastell [i.e., William Rastell], editor, The Workes of Sir Thomas More Knyght, […], London: […] Iohn Cawod, Iohn Waly, and Richarde Tottell, published 30 April 1557, →OCLC, pages 1195–1196:

     He [the Devil] marketh well […] mennes complexions within thẽ [them], health, or ſicknes, good humours or badde, by which they be light hearted or lumpiſh, ſtrong hearted, or faynt & fieble of ſpirite, bolde and hardy, or timorous and fearefull of courage.

   • 1786, Robert Burns, “To a Mouse”, in Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect, volume I, Kilmarnock, Scotland: […] John Wilson, →OCLC; reprinted Kilmarnock, Scotland: […] James M‘Kie, 1867, →OCLC:

     Wee sleekit, cowrin', tim'rous beastie, / Oh, what a panic's in thy breastie!

   • 1895–1897, H[erbert] G[eorge] Wells, “The Days of Imprisonment”, in The War of the Worlds, London: William Heinemann, published 1898, →OCLC, book II (The Earth under the Martians), page 219:

     [H]e was one of those weak creatures full of a shifty cunning - who face neither God nor man, who face not even themselves, void of pride, timorous, anæmic, hateful souls.

   • 1922 February, James Joyce, Ulysses, Paris: Shakespeare and Company, […], →OCLC:

     He turned a long you are wrong gaze on Stephen of timorous dark pride at the soft impeachment with a glance also of entreaty for he seemed to glean in a kind of a way that it wasn't all exactly.

   • 1934 October, George Orwell [pseudonym; Eric Arthur Blair], Burmese Days, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers, Publishers, →OCLC:

     The suspect was a man of forty, with a grey, timorous face, dressed only in a ragged longyi kilted to the knee, beneath which his lank, curved shins were specked with tick-bites.

• (fearful): fearful, shy, timid

• (antonym(s) of “fearful”): daredevil, dauntless, reckless, untimorous, temerarious.

• timorsome

• James A. H. Murray et al., editors (1884–1928), “Timorous”, in A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles (Oxford English Dictionary), volume X, Part 1 (Ti–U), London: Clarendon Press, →OCLC, page 46, column 1.

• sumotori