cowardice

n.
Ignoble fear in the face of danger or pain.

[Middle English cowardise, from Old French couardise, alteration of couardie, from couard, coward. See coward.]

noun

Ignoble lack of courage: chickenheartedness, cowardliness, cravenness, dastardliness, faint-heartedness, funk, pusillanimity, unmanliness. Slang gutlessness, yellowness, yellow streak. See fear/courage.

Cowardice in a military context is the refusal to confront the hardships of combat, the possibility of injury and death, and the requirement for self-sacrifice. Cowardice is distinct from fear. In any situation, military or otherwise, fear is a natural and rational response to the prospect of extreme discomfort and pain. Veterans of combat have often written of the fear which they and their fellows felt, and have usually been wary of if not actively hostile towards those who, professing themselves fearless, might involve them in unnecessary risks. In combat the soldier who proves unwilling to control his fear and who chooses self-preservation over duty is labelled a coward, losing the respect and loyalty of colleagues and facing punishment under military law. The concept of cowardice, therefore, incorporates both the individual's action and the reaction to it; what turns an otherwise natural, human response into something to be deplored is the context of combat.

There are two explanations for the intolerance of cowardice traditionally shown by military organizations. The first concerns general, embedded expectations of appropriate male behaviour in extremis; fear may be natural, but mature, dutiful, and responsible men are expected to control it. The second is that the entire purpose of military training and organization is to make sure that when the ‘fight or flight’ autonomic response takes place, the soldier chooses the former. A military unit must be disciplined, cohesive, and efficient if it is to withstand the pressures of combat and one individual's cowardice may undermine the whole unit's effectiveness, either by emulation or simply by opening a hole in a position that the enemy may exploit.

A distinction should be drawn between the unwillingness to confront battle, and an inability to do so. The 20th century has seen the gradual development of a more sympathetic assessment of the effects of battle on the human mind, and it is now widely accepted that some who might previously have been considered cowards may in fact be psychiatric casualties and their behaviour the involuntary symptoms of battle stress.

— John P. Campbell

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Dansk (Danish)
n. - kujoneri

Nederlands (Dutch)
lafheid

Français (French)
n. - lâcheté, poltronnerie

Deutsch (German)
n. - Feigheit

Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - ανανδρία, δειλία

Italiano (Italian)
codardia, vigliaccheria, viltà, pusillanimità

Português (Portuguese)
n. - covardia (f)

Русский (Russian)
трусость

Español (Spanish)
n. - cobardía

Svenska (Swedish)
n. - feghet, rädsla

中文（简体）(Chinese (Simplified))
胆小, 懦弱, 卑怯

中文（繁體）(Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 膽小, 懦弱, 卑怯

한국어 (Korean)
n. - 겁, 소심, 비겁

日本語 (Japanese)
n. - 臆病

العربيه (Arabic)
‏(الاسم) الجبن, تخوف‏

עברית (Hebrew)
n. - ‮פחדנות‬

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