cower.
To crouch or cringe, or to avoid or shy away from something, in fear.
Meaning & usage
To crouch or cringe, or to avoid or shy away from something, in fear.
He'd be useless in war. He'd just cower in his bunker until the enemy came in and shot him, or until the war was over.
To crouch in general.
To cause to cower; to frighten into submission.
To be a coward; to hide away or refuse to face opposition due to fear.
Where this word comes from
From Middle English couren, cowre, from Middle Low German kûren (“to lie in wait; linger”) or from North Germanic (Icelandic kúra (“to doze”)); according to Pokorny, all are ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *gew- (“to curve, bend”), see also Proto-Germanic *kuddô (“shell, pod”). Cognate with German kauern (“to squat”), Dutch koeren (“to keep watch (in a cowered position)”), Serbo-Croatian kutriti (“to lie in a bent position”), Swedish kura (“huddle, cower”). Unrelated to coward, which is of Latin origin.
To cherish with care.
Try it on your idea.
cower has 5 characters. Say it out loud, try it alongside a description of your project, and see whether its meaning fits what you want to create.
These are naming prompts. Meanings and pronunciation can vary; existing brand and domain uses have not been checked.
Explore the name generatorA word with a source.
Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.
Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.