Word.ws English Dictionary

cower

/ˈkaʊə/US/ˈkaʊɚ/

cower verb: to crouch or cringe, or to avoid or shy away from something, in fear.

Verb (1)

cower (third-person singular simple present cowers, present participle cowering, simple past and past participle cowered)

  1. (intransitive) To crouch or cringe, or to avoid or shy away from something, in fear.
    • He'd be useless in war. He'd just cower in his bunker until the enemy came in and shot him, or until the war was over.
    • Our dame sits cowering o'er a kitchen fire.1700, John Dryden, "The Cock and the Fox", in Fables, Ancient and Modern, published March 1700
  2. (archaic, intransitive) To crouch in general.
    • Some sterner virtues o’er the mountain’s breast
      May sit, like falcons, cowering on the nest1764, Oliver Goldsmith, The Traveller
    • The mother bird had mov’d not,
      But cowering o’er her nestlings,
      Sate confident and fearless,
      And watch’d the wonted guest.1801, Robert Southey, “(please specify the page)”, in Thalaba the Destroyer, volume (please specify |volume=I or II), London: […] [F]or T[homas] N[orton] Longman and O[wen] Rees, […], by Biggs and...
  3. (transitive) To cause to cower; to frighten into submission.
    • This done, their doubts will vanish, and they will stand confronted by an object lesson which must have the effect either to arouse them to a determination to banish despotism from the land, or cower them into submission and servitude.1895, Annual Report of the Bureau of Labor and Industry of Kansas
    • My spirit will cower them and make them wish they had never risen up against me.2007, DJ Birmingham, The Queen's Tale: The Struggle for the Survival of Ireland, page 170
  4. (figuratively, intransitive) To be a coward; to hide away or refuse to face opposition due to fear.

Verb (2)

cower (third-person singular simple present cowers, present participle cowering, simple past and past participle cowered)

  1. (obsolete, transitive) To cherish with care.

cower meaning in Tamil, Urdu, Bengali and Malayalam

cower in Tamil

அச்சப் பதுங்குதல்

cower in Urdu

ڈر سے سہم جانا

cower in Bengali

ভয়ে কুঁকড়ে যাওয়া

cower in Malayalam

പേടിച്ചു ചുരുളുക, പതുങ്ങിക്കിടക്കുക, ഭയംകൊണ്ടു വിറയ്ക്കുക
More languagesFewer languages
cower in Kannada
ಬಗ್ಗಿ ನಿಲ್ಲು, ಮುದುಕು

Examples of cower in a sentence

  • Carrot ran past him to get to the barrel first, and peered down at the cowering Catweazle.1970, Richard Carpenter, Catweazle, Harmondsworth: Puffin Books, page 21:
  • A vicious Mafia threat intended to cower him—but the chief doesn't cower.2010, Marilyn Brown Oden, The Dead Saint:

All 20 example sentences with cower

Forms of cower

third-person singular presentcowers
present participlecowering
past participlecowered
pastcowered

Past tense of cower: cowered

Origin of cower

From Middle English couren, cowre, from Middle Low German kûren (“to lie in wait; linger”) or from North Germanic (Icelandic kúra (“to doze”)); according to Pokorny, all are ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *gew- (“to curve, bend”), see also Proto-Germanic *kuddô (“shell, pod”). Cognate with German kauern (“to squat”), Dutch koeren (“to keep watch (in a cowered position)”), Serbo-Croatian kutriti (“to lie in a bent position”), Swedish kura (“huddle, cower”). Unrelated to coward, which is of Latin origin.

Words formed from cower

Words that rhyme with cower

1 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about cower

What does cower mean?
Cower means to crouch or cringe, or to avoid or shy away from something, in fear.
What is cower in Tamil?
Cower in Tamil is அச்சப் பதுங்குதல். See Cower meaning in Tamil.
How do you use cower in a sentence?
Carrot ran past him to get to the barrel first, and peered down at the cowering Catweazle.
What part of speech is cower?
Cower is a verb.
How do you pronounce cower?
Cower is pronounced /ˈkaʊɚ/ (US).
What is the past tense of cower?
The past tense of cower is cowered.

Words near cower in the dictionary

  1. coweens
  2. Cowell
  3. Cowellian
  4. cowen
  5. cowens
  6. cower
  7. cowered
  8. cowerer
  9. cowerers
  10. cowering
  11. coweringly

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: cower (page history and authors); cower (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); cower (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); cower (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); cower (Malayalam Wiktionary) (page history and authors); cower (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “cower.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/cower. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.