Word.ws English Dictionary

recreancy

/ˈɹɛkɹiənsi/

recreancy noun: the quality or state of being recreant; shameful cowardice; perfidy.

Noun

recreancy (countable and uncountable, plural recreancies)

  1. The quality or state of being recreant; shameful cowardice; perfidy.
    • What must be the feelings of the sons of Massachusetts when, on any public occasion requiring a statement of her claims, the boast of her former deeds shall be met with the reproach of her later recreancy?1824, Harrison Gray Otis, Letters in Defence of the Hartford Convention and the People of Massachusetts, Letter II
    • Sir, can it be possible, that I correctly understood a gentleman from the Valley, to say on the first day of this debate, that he was instructed to vote against any and every possible scheme of emancipation which might be brought forward this winter […] I did not suppose there was that single...1832, Charles J. Faulkner, The Speech of Charles James Faulkner (of Berkeley) in the House of Delegates of Virginia, on the Policy of the State with Respect to Her Slave Population

Examples of recreancy in a sentence

  • [T]he punishment for recreancy falls on the champion himself unless his hirer raises him from the field.1892 April, Frederic William Maitland, “Glanville Revisited”, in Harvard Law Review:
  • Swann remained silent, and, by this fresh act of recreancy, spoiled the brilliant dialectical contest which Mme Verdurin was rejoicing at being able to offer to Forcheville.1981, C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin (rev. by D.J. Enright), Swann’s Way by Marcel Proust, Part Two: "Swann in Love"

Forms of recreancy

pluralrecreancies

Questions about recreancy

What does recreancy mean?
Recreancy means the quality or state of being recreant; shameful cowardice; perfidy.
How do you use recreancy in a sentence?
[T]he punishment for recreancy falls on the champion himself unless his hirer raises him from the field.
What part of speech is recreancy?
Recreancy is a noun.
How do you pronounce recreancy?
Recreancy is pronounced /ˈɹɛkɹiənsi/.
What is the plural of recreancy?
The plural of recreancy is recreancies.

Words near recreancy in the dictionary

  1. recrawling
  2. recrawls
  3. recrayed
  4. recreance
  5. recreancies
  6. recreancy
  7. recreant
  8. recreantly
  9. recreants
  10. recrease
  11. recreased

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: recreancy (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: “recreancy.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/recreancy. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.