Timorous

adjective

Prone to being scared, anxious, or having little courage, especially in the face of the unknown

Usage

Do you know someone who is just shy or anxious in general? Certainly, all of us have cause to fear or worry sometimes, but there are some who are just predisposed to be nervous. While it might be tempting to exhort the timorous individuals among our friends and families to simply be more outgoing, before you give them that well-meaning push, take a moment to remember how you feel when you’re scared. It is often best to let people face their fears in their own time, when they’re ready.

Timorous describes a person or thing as fearful, nervous, or hesitant to face something, particularly when some aspect of it is uncertain. Just as with the broader feeling of fear, one can be timorous in regard to a certain object, or merely timorous in general. For instance, one could be timorous toward traveling by plane or just because they are an anxious person.

The main difference between being timorous and being afraid is that, while it is possible to be timorous for a temporary span of time, it usually implies a long-term trend toward apprehension or fear, rather than simply characterizing a mood or a passing, momentary feeling. Thus it would be more appropriate to say that hearing a creepy urban legend made you scared or frightened than timorous, unless perhaps it touched off a pattern of paranoia. Timorous can be applied both to things, particularly actions, and to people. For example, a timorous person might be uncomfortable meeting people at a party, but if their friends goaded them into making new acquaintances, they might give a timorous wave, or even extend a timorous hand for a handshake if they are feeling particularly bold in that moment. If something or someone captures a habit of apprehensiveness, it is timorous.

Example: The timorous cat retreated underneath the bed anytime it heard a voice it didn’t recognize.

Example: The timorous transfer student was a perfectly sociable young woman, but she was shy and slow to make new friends.

Origin

Timorous first arrived in the English language in the early 1400s, taken from the Middle French timoureus, meaning “fearful,” and, before that, the Old French temeros. Temeros comes from the Medieval Latin word timorosus, meaning “fearful” and which itself comes from the Latin word timor, meaning “fright, terror, or apprehension,” and also “divine inspiration or religious awe.” This stems from the root timere, meaning “to fear” or “to be frightened,” whose origin is uncertain. Timid also stems from this Latin root, although instead of tracing its lineage through timor, as timorous does, it descended from the Latin timidus, meaning “fearful, anxious, scared.” Historically, early English uses of timorous were accidentally conflated with the Middle English temerous, meaning “reckless” or “brazen” and from which the modern English word temerity is derived.

Derivative Words

Timorously: This adverb form of timorous indicates when an action is carried out in an apprehensive or fearful way.

Example: The young boy, having never encountered a cat before, timorously extended a pudgy hand to pet the furry creature.

Timorousness: The noun form of timorous indicates the quality of shyness or anxiety in a person or thing.

Example: Having joined a few extracurricular clubs, her timorousness had largely vanished by the end of the semester, and she readily attended campus social outings.

In Literature

From Steven Pressfield's The Virtues of War:

Always attack. Even in defense, attack. The attacking arm possesses the
initiative and thus commands the action. To attack makes men brave; to defend
makes them timorous.

In this passage, the narrator cautions that a skillful commander should frame even their army’s defenses as an attack, as adopting a purely defensive posture creates a pervasively fearful, or timorous, attitude in the troops.

Mnemonic

One who is timorous is quite timid.
Timorous is to be fearful all the time.