Word of the Day Archive
Saturday January 17, 2004
timorous \TIM-uhr-uhs\ , adjective:
1. Full of apprehensiveness; timid; fearful.
2. Indicating, or caused by, fear.
Girls, allegedly so timorous and lacking in confidence, now outnumber boys in student government, in honor societies, on school newspapers, and even in debating clubs.
-- Christina Hoff Sommers, The War Against Boys
Some men by the unalterable frame of their constitutions, are stout, others timorous, some confident, others modest.
-- John Locke, Some Thoughts Concerning Education
The way we are living,
timorous or bold,
will have been our life.
-- Seamus Heaney, "Elegy"
The source of timorous is Latin timor, "fear."
Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation for timorous
