Words at Play : Top 10 Sophisticated Insults
Definition:
weak and afraid of danger
Example:
"Iran hawks should not view sanctions as a pusillanimous cop-out." – Reuel Marc Gerecht and Mark Dubowitz, New York Times, November 19, 2011
About the Word:
This odd-looking word has ancestry in the Latin pusillus ("very small") plus animus ("soul, mind, spirit").
It's been used by such notables as Ralph Waldo Emerson ("It is a pusillanimous desertion of our work to gaze after our neighbours"), and the disgraced Vice-President Spiro Agnew, who called journalists "pusillanimous pussyfooters."
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