- 1蜷縮、嚇得往後退（身體縮起來，不是「膽小的人」那個字）
To cower is to make yourself small because you are — you bend, sink, or shuffle back, as if a blow or a shout might land on you. A dog cowers when someone raises a hand; a child may cower in a doorway during a storm; a person can cower before a bully. It is about the body showing fear, not about careful planning. You can cower for a second or stay cowering. The word is a little literary and a little sad; news and novels use it more than chat. It is not the same as crouch (you can crouch to tie a shoe) and it is not a cousin of coward, though they sit near each other in the mind and even look related. Coward comes from Latin. Cower comes from older northern European words for staying low, waiting, or dozing in a bent shape; German kauern still means to squat that way.
組成From Middle English couren / cowre, from Middle Low German kûren (“to lie in wait; linger”) or from North Germanic (Icelandic kúra, “to doze”). A scholar, Pokorny, traced these to a very old root *gew- meaning “to curve, bend.” Cousin of German kauern (“to squat”). Not from the same stock as coward.
原始詞典資料5 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，摘錄並精簡格式，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
cowerverb詞源 1/ˈkaʊɚ/
- 1
To crouch or cringe, or to avoid or shy away from something, in fear.
- He'd be useless in war. He'd just cower in his bunker until the enemy came in and shot him, or until the war was over.
- Our dame sits cowering o'er a kitchen fire.
- 2
archaicTo crouch in general.
- Some sterner virtues o’er the mountain’s breast May sit, like falcons, cowering on the nest
- The mother bird had mov’d not, But cowering o’er her nestlings, Sate confident and fearless, And watch’d the wonted guest.
- 3
To cause to cower; to frighten into submission.
- This done, their doubts will vanish, and they will stand confronted by an object lesson which must have the effect either to arouse them to a determination to banish despotism from the land, or cower them into submission and servitude.
- My spirit will cower them and make them wish they had never risen up against me.
- 4
To be a coward; to hide away or refuse to face opposition due to fear.
cowerverb詞源 2/ˈkaʊɚ/
- 1
obsoleteTo cherish with care.
摘錄自 英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary，已精簡格式；依 CC BY-SA 4.0 授權使用，改動後的內容同樣以此授權提供。