Word.ws English Dictionary

faintheart

faintheart is the alternative spelling of faint-heart.

Meaning of faint-heart

Noun

faint-heart (plural faint-hearts)

  1. A cowardly, faint-hearted person; one who is irresolute or fearful.
    • Beowulf had scarcely died before the faint-hearts came crawling out of their burrows.1961, Norma Lorre Goodrich, “Beowulf”, in The Medieval Myths, New York: The New American Library, page 48

Forms of faintheart

pluralfainthearts

Origin of faintheart

From faint + heart.

Questions about faintheart

What is faintheart the alternative spelling of?
Faintheart is the alternative spelling of faint-heart.

Words near faintheart in the dictionary

  1. fainter
  2. fainters
  3. faintest
  4. fainteth
  5. faintful
  6. faintheart
  7. fainthearted
  8. faintheartedly
  9. faintheartedness
  10. faintheartednesses
  11. fainthearts

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: faintheart (page history and authors); faint-heart (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.

Last updated:

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