FAINT-HEARTED

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does faint-hearted mean? 

• FAINT-HEARTED (adjective)
  The adjective FAINT-HEARTED has 1 sense:

1. lacking conviction or boldness or courage

  Familiarity information: FAINT-HEARTED used as an adjective is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• FAINT-HEARTED (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Lacking conviction or boldness or courage

Synonyms:

faint; faint-hearted; fainthearted; timid

Context example:

faint heart ne'er won fair lady

Similar:

cowardly; fearful (lacking courage; ignobly timid and faint-hearted)

 Context examples 

And the head popped back again; and we heard no more, for the time, of these six very faint-hearted seamen.

(Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

My aunt being supremely indifferent to Mrs. Crupp's opinion and everybody else's, and rather favouring than discouraging the idea, Mrs. Crupp, of late the bold, became within a few days so faint-hearted, that rather than encounter my aunt upon the staircase, she would endeavour to hide her portly form behind doors—leaving visible, however, a wide margin of flannel petticoat—or would shrink into dark corners.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

Not fear of them individually, of course—our foulest detractors have never called us faint-hearted—but fear of their star, fear of their future, fear of the subtle brain whose plans always seemed to go aright, and of the heavy hand which had struck nation after nation to the ground.

(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)