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.
   • 1785, Robert Burns, To a Mouse:

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

   • 1898, H.G. Wells, The War of the Worlds, London: William Heinemann, 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, “Episode 16”, in 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, George Orwell, Burmese Days:

     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

• (fearful): daredevil, dauntless, reckless, untimorous

• 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