Pusillanimous

This word has nothing to do with pugilism, as I mistakenly thought.  Quite the opposite, in fact.  It's an adjective that means cowardly, faint hearted and weak spirited.  It's earliest recorded use was from before 1425 (spelt without the 'o') and came directly from the Latin pusillanumus/pusillanimis, which meant having very little courage.  It was a merging of the Latin for little, pusillus, and the Latin for spirit or courage, animus.  The spelling that we know first appeared in 1586, but sadly the word is rarely seen in literature anymore.

Allow me to leave you with a quote from a classic.  In the film The Wizard of Oz, the Wizard says to the Scarecrow, "Why anybody can have a brain.  That's a very mediocre commodity.  Every pusillanimous creature that crawls on the earth or slinks through slimy seas has a brain."


Sources:
Chambers 21st Century Dictionary (1996), Chambers.
The Wizard of Oz [online], www.imdb.com/title/tt0032138 (Accessed 10 February 2012).
Images:
The Wizard of Oz (1939), Warner Brothers.



Juliana