scaredy-cat
scaredy-cat noun: a coward; a person who is easily frightened or high-strung and easily scared.
Noun
scaredy-cat (plural scaredy-cats)
- A coward; a person who is easily frightened or high-strung and easily scared.
- I don't care — I wouldn't be such a scaredy-cat for anything.1918, Florence Kiper Frank, “The Child and the Little Sister”, in The Midland, volume 4, page 61
- Oh, yes, do let's dance together—it's so nice to meet a man who isn't a scaredy-cat about catching my beri-beri.1933, Dorothy Parker, The Waltz
- Synonyms:
- fraidy cat, scaredy pants, bottler, caitiff, candy-ass, candy-arse, coistril, coward, chicken, chicken liver
Synonyms of scaredy-cat
- fraidy cat
- scaredy pants
- bottler
- candy-ass
- candy-arse
- coward
- chicken
- chicken liver
- chickenshit
- cocktail
30 more synonymsFewer synonyms
Forms of scaredy-cat
| plural | scaredy-cats |
|---|---|
| alternative form | scaredy cat |
Origin of scaredy-cat
From scared + -y + cat.
Questions about scaredy-cat
- What does scaredy-cat mean?
- Scaredy-cat means a coward; a person who is easily frightened or high-strung and easily scared.
- What part of speech is scaredy-cat?
- Scaredy-cat is a noun.
- What is the plural of scaredy-cat?
- The plural of scaredy-cat is scaredy-cats.
Words near scaredy-cat in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: scaredy-cat (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:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-scaredy-cat.wav.
Cite this entry: “scaredy-cat.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/scaredy-cat. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.