Cowardice
From Freepedia
- Coward redirects here. You may be looking for Coward, South Carolina, or for the playwright Noel Coward.
Cowardice is a vice. Conventionally it is the corruption of prudence. Cowardice may be considered to be prudence that does not take consequences to their furthest extent.
Cowardice is not fear, but rather a submission to vice that uses fear as a pretext. Here is an example of virtuous fear: we all fear to dive head-first into a swimming pool the depth of which we do not know. An example of cowardice would be to refuse to testify against a crime lord, merely because one might risk death.
According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, the word "coward" comes from an Old French word coart, a combination of the word for "tail" and an agent noun suffix. It would therefore have meant "one with a tail" — perhaps one in the habit of turning it.
The English surname Coward, however, has the same origin and meaning as the word "cowherd".
