from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
- n. A base coward: "Every moment of the fashion industry's misery is richly deserved by the designers . . . and magazine poltroons who perpetuate this absurd creation” ( Nina Totenberg).
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
- n. An ignoble or total coward; a dastard; a mean-spirited wretch.
- adj. Cowardly.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English
- adj. Base; vile; contemptible; cowardly.
- n. An arrant coward; a dastard; a craven; a mean-spirited wretch.
from The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. A lazy, idle fellow; a sluggard; a fellow without spirit or courage; a dastard; a coward.
- n. Synonyms Craven, Dastard, etc. See coward.
- Base; cowardly; contemptible.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- adj. characterized by complete cowardliness
- n. an abject coward
Being dismissed as a liar and poltroon translates to “respect”?
Abraham Lincoln was called a poltroon, a hypocrite, because he was deliberate, painstaking and cautious about issuing the Emancipation Proclamation.
Tyrrell is best known now as an insane Clinton-basher, but he became sort of famous in the '70s by fancying himself the reincarnation of H.L. Mencken, writing a lot of Carter-bashing columns where he called everyone a "poltroon" or "the honorable" something.
I will call the poltroon in the White House scum, however.)
It doesn't matter what kind of poltroon parks his or her butt in the Oval Office, or how they get in there; they will be presented to the people as a figure of moral authority and gravitas -- and be accepted as such by large swathes of the public.
"Plague on it!" cried Telemachus, laying the bow aside with an air of vexation, "must I be called a poltroon all my life, or is it that I have not yet attained the full measure of my strength?
“The only way someone will ever get through to a “suck on this, filthy shvatz goyim!” poltroon like Tom Friedman is if they do a Danny Pearl on him.”
The only way someone will ever get through to a “suck on this, filthy shvatz goyim!” poltroon like Tom Friedman is if they do a Danny Pearl on him.
You are scarcely better than your chancellor, who is a thief and a poltroon!
In the end, though, we can hardly blame the old poltroon for trying it on via his lawyer over the Culshaw fiasco.