Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use craven in a sentence

12 example sentences · adjective, noun, verb

Craven means unwilling to fight; lacking even the rudiments of courage; extremely cowardly. Example: “Prime Minister Abe's fumbling and craven performance took place on a national holiday in Korea, marking the countrywide uprising against the Japanese colonial rule that began on March 1, 1919.”

Examples of craven by meaning

adjectiveUnwilling to fight; lacking even the rudiments of courage; extremely cowardly.

  • Prime Minister Abe's fumbling and craven performance took place on a national holiday in Korea, marking the countrywide uprising against the Japanese colonial rule that began on March 1, 1919.2010, Bruce Cumings, The Korean War
  • There’s no perfect approach to content moderation, but they could at least try to look less transparently craven and incoherent.”2020 October 12, Andrew Marantz, quoting Dave Willner, “Why Facebook Can’t Fix Itself”, in The New Yorker
  • The PP has seized on the possibility of an amnesty to rally support and to portray the PSOE leader as craven, dependent on Catalan separatists and hellbent on remaining in office.2023 September 26, Sam Jones, “Spain elections: Feijóo launches doomed bid to lead country”, in The Guardian, →ISSN

nounA coward.

  • “God knows I would rather die licked in the fire by the side of my king than to live out my days twitted and scorned as a craven.”1961, Norma Lorre Goodrich, “Beowulf”, in The Medieval Myths, New York: The New American Library, page 45

More sentences with craven

  • With little or no dignity, they shamelessly prostrate themselves in the most craven way.2014 July 10, Stephen Glover, “Sorry, but Gandhi statue in Westminster is a cheap stunt by ministers with scant knowledge of history…. From the entry prostrate
  • When you have a hundred francs in the world you are liable to the most craven panics.1933 January 9, George Orwell [pseudonym; Eric Arthur Blair], chapter III, in Down and Out in Paris and London, London: Victor Gollancz…. From the entry indifferent
  • To do this were incredibly base, the subterfuge of a recreant and a craven.1928, Montague Summers, chapter 3, in The Vampire, His Kith and Kin. From the entry recreant
  • In his philosophy he practised an ecumenicism that in a lesser mind would strike us as suspicious or even craven.2010, Neal Stephenson, “Atoms of cognition: metaphysics in the Royal Society, 1715–2010”, in Bill Bryson, editor, Seeing Further: The…. From the entry ecumenicism
  • Brown, and the rest, are hideous and malignant creatures all, and prey to their own craven, violent, and envious natures.1994, Michael Swanwick, “In the Tradition...”, in Ellen Datlow, Terri Windling, editors, The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror: Eighth Annual…. From the entry corviform
  • I was going to wait for Monsieur Hyppolyte and, like a craven, hand the whole thing over to him.1959, Mary Stewart, chapter XVII, in Nine Coaches Waiting, M. S. Mill Company, page 268. From the entry deus ex machina
  • Would not her refusal to do so be craven flight from the new reality which faces her, a kind of desertion or slackerdom?1920, Granville Stanley Hall, Morale, the Supreme Standard of Life and Conduct. From the entry slackerdom
  • He straightway broke into bitter lamentations, such as I had never heard from him before, for he had always asserted that such wailing was for craven and lowhearted men.1982, Moses Hadas, transl., Complete Plays:Sophocles, →ISBN, page 10. From the entry lowhearted

Meaning of craven

  1. adjective Unwilling to fight; lacking even the rudiments of courage; extremely cowardly.
  2. noun A coward.
  3. verb To make craven.

Full definition of craven

Questions about craven in a sentence

How do you use craven in a sentence?
Craven is used as an adjective, noun and verb. For example: “Prime Minister Abe's fumbling and craven performance took place on a national holiday in Korea, marking the countrywide uprising against the Japanese colonial rule that began on March 1, 1919.”
What is a short sentence with craven?
“To do this were incredibly base, the subterfuge of a recreant and a craven.”
What does craven mean?
Craven means unwilling to fight; lacking even the rudiments of courage; extremely cowardly.

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: craven (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this page: “How to use craven in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/craven. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.