Nidderling

adj, noun

adj, noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    Someone who is weak and cowardly. archaic

    "There they meet young men who have the true feeling for the sex, and call that man churl and nidderling and pitiful sneak and cur, who would suffer any young woman whom he loves to work if he could order otherwise."

Adjective
  1. 1
    Unmanly. archaic

    "... and dismissing him with a half sullen, half courteous "Goot nicht," disappeared, before Philip had half got to the end of his catalogue of mental execrations, on the "hog of a German brute, that set no more by the life and limb of a born gentleman, than o' one of his own outlandish, nidderling chaps, that never a Christian soul ud go for to look arter, an' the old Barton ud tumble upon the heads o' the whole kit on em.""

Example

More examples

"There they meet young men who have the true feeling for the sex, and call that man churl and nidderling and pitiful sneak and cur, who would suffer any young woman whom he loves to work if he could order otherwise."

Etymology

Corruption of niddering.

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.