Word.ws English Dictionary

reluctant dragon

reluctant dragon noun: a reluctant person; somebody unwilling to get involved.

Noun

reluctant dragon (plural reluctant dragons)

  1. (colloquial) A reluctant person; somebody unwilling to get involved.
    • ENDICOTT: I think probably one of the promotive things we did was to finally convince Luther Terry that he had to do something about smoking and health. He certainly was a reluctant dragon, for a long time.1979, A History of Cancer Control in the United States, 1946-1971
    • […] Dodd seemed a “reluctant dragon.” No report on his violence probe was ever published. An interim report was mimeographed in a watered-down version for subcommittee members, but never released to the public.1990, Eric Barnouw, Tube of Plenty: The Evolution of American Television

Forms of reluctant dragon

pluralreluctant dragons

Origin of reluctant dragon

In reference to The Reluctant Dragon, an 1898 children's story by Kenneth Grahame about a shy dragon with no desire to fight people, adapted into a Walt Disney animated film in 1941.

Questions about reluctant dragon

What does reluctant dragon mean?
Reluctant dragon means a reluctant person; somebody unwilling to get involved.
What part of speech is reluctant dragon?
Reluctant dragon is a noun.
What is the plural of reluctant dragon?
The plural of reluctant dragon is reluctant dragons.

Words near reluctant dragon in the dictionary

  1. reluctance motors
  2. reluctances
  3. reluctancies
  4. reluctancy
  5. reluctant
  6. reluctant dragon
  7. reluctant dragons
  8. reluctantly
  9. reluctate
  10. reluctated
  11. reluctates

Source and license

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