Word.ws English Dictionary

white-livered

white-livered adjective: lily-livered; cowardly.

Adjective

white-livered (comparative more white-livered, superlative most white-livered)

  1. (archaic) Lily-livered; cowardly.
    • Some evil fellows said behind his back that Beowulf was white-livered and a slacker.1961, Norma Lorre Goodrich, “Beowulf”, in The Medieval Myths, New York: The New American Library, page 39
  2. (archaic) Malicious.
  3. (archaic) Having a pale look, once thought to be caused by a white liver.

Forms of white-livered

comparativemore white-livered
superlativemost white-livered

Questions about white-livered

What does white-livered mean?
White-livered means lily-livered; cowardly.
What part of speech is white-livered?
White-livered is an adjective.

Words near white-livered in the dictionary

  1. white-lipped peccaries
  2. white-lipped peccary
  3. white-lipped snail
  4. white-lipped snails
  5. white-lipped tree frog
  6. white-livered
  7. white-naped crane
  8. white-naped cranes
  9. white-naped tit
  10. white-naped tits
  11. white-naped xenopsaris

Source and license

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