as in afraid
having or showing a shameful lack of courage
a chicken-livered newspaper editor who has been afraid to take on the town's powerful business elite
Synonyms & Similar Words
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Antonyms & Near Antonyms
Example Sentences
Recent Examples of Synonyms for chicken-livered
Adjective
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Umpires, afraid of being overturned, or at least, more aware of the new zone and its limitations, have been calling fewer strikes.—
Ian Miller OutKick,
FOXNews.com,
29 Apr. 2026 -
Almost half are personally afraid of losing their job to AI, ranking it among the most acute individual stressors measured in the survey.—
Jessica Guynn,
USA Today,
28 Apr. 2026
Adjective
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Kristen Wile of Unpretentious Palate kindly offered me a bite of her toothsome barbacoa entree, wrapped in a collard leaf and served with mayocoba (a creamy, yellow-green canary bean) and a red and green salsa duo.—
Heidi Finley,
Charlotte Observer,
28 Apr. 2026
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Another is bright yellow with a smooth, contrasting black hood around its head.—
Sheryl DeVore,
Chicago Tribune,
28 Apr. 2026
Adjective
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There were a number of people who were very, very scared.—
CBS News,
CBS News,
27 Apr. 2026
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From then on, no more physical abuse occurs in front of the camera, though there is tension in the air during many of Joe's scenes, as Michael is scared of standing up to his dad until the very end.—
Brendan Morrow,
USA Today,
23 Apr. 2026
Adjective
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Those children hadn’t seemed frightened to me, not visibly anyway.—
Literary Hub,
Literary Hub,
1 May 2026
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How Animal Lovers Can Help For readers who have ever bottle-fed a baby animal, comforted a frightened pet or simply paused to watch a deer step out of the woods at dusk, Forest’s story is a familiar kind of heartbreak — and a familiar kind of hope.—
Hanna Wickes,
Charlotte Observer,
28 Apr. 2026
Adjective
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Be careful when handling debris that may have blown into your yard.—
CA Weather Bot,
Sacbee.com,
2 May 2026
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Through some careful engineering, Roberts, Alito, and their allies have created a trap for voting-rights cases.—
Vann R. Newkirk II,
The Atlantic,
2 May 2026
Adjective
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Some also have lost lawyers, dismayed by the pusillanimous behavior of their leaders.—
Michael Hiltzik,
Los Angeles Times,
28 May 2025
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The second believed the United States could attain comprehensive security through military-technological means and saw diplomacy as a quixotic or pusillanimous enterprise that dishonored and weakened the country.—
A. Wess Mitchell,
Foreign Affairs,
22 Apr. 2025
Adjective
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That larger significance is remarkably unheroic and fatalistic.—
Gabriel Winslow-Yost,
Harper's Magazine,
23 Sep. 2024
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In the world of The Boys, based on the gleefully scabrous 2000s indie comic-book series of the same name by writer Garth Ennis and artist Darick Robertson, superheroes are real, pop-culture-dominating, and with rare exceptions, entirely unheroic.—
Brian Hiatt,
Rolling Stone,
13 June 2024
Adjective
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The joke is on the cowardly villagers, and on Hoja himself, all of whom now have to live in a village terrorized by two war elephants instead of one.—
Perin Gürel,
The Conversation,
22 Apr. 2026
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Your writing is disgusting and your lack of confronting this team front office head on is an enormous act of cowardly proportions.—
Ira Winderman,
Sun Sentinel,
19 Apr. 2026
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Cite this Entry
“Chicken-livered.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/chicken-livered. Accessed 3 May. 2026.
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