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Timorous
Definitions
- 1 Tending to be easily frightened; shy, timid.
"But thou now O temerous ⁊ weake ſely ſhepe, thynke yt ſufficient for thee, onely to walke after me, which am thy ſhepehearde ⁊ gouernor: […]"
- 2 Feeling fear; afraid, fearful, frightened. archaic
"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."
- 3 Fastidious in dressing. UK, dialectal
- 4 Fired with intense feeling; passionate. UK, dialectal
- 5 Hard to manage; difficult, tiresome. UK, dialectal
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- 6 Causing dread or fear; dreadful, terrible. obsolete
"Well, having past halfe way downewards, wee came to the most scurrile and timorous Discent of the whole passage, where with much difficuty, I set safe the foure Germanes in our narrow Rode hewen out of the craggy Hill; […]"
- 7 Humble, modest; also, showing reverence; respectful, reverent, reverential. obsolete
- 1 timid by nature or revealing timidity wordnet
Etymology
From Late Middle English timorous (“(adjective) fearful, frightened; causing fear, dreadful, terrible; deferential, modest; (noun) timid people collectively”), borrowed from Old French temoros, temorous, from Medieval Latin timōrōsus, from timōr- (the stem of Latin timor (“dread, fear”)) + -ōsus (suffix meaning ‘full of; prone to’). Timor is derived from timeō (“to be afraid of, fear”) (further origin uncertain, possibly from Proto-Indo-European *temH- (“dark”)) + -or (suffix forming third-declension masculine abstract nouns). Doublet of timoroso.
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