Knave vs Coward - What's the difference?
knave | coward |
(archaic) A boy; especially, a boy servant.
(archaic) Any male servant; a menial.
A tricky, deceitful fellow; a dishonest person; a rogue; a villain.
*
*:I had never defrauded a man of a farthing, nor called him knave behind his back. But now the last rag that covered my nakedness had been torn from me. I was branded a blackleg, card-sharper, and murderer.
*1977 , (Geoffrey Chaucer), (The Canterbury Tales) , Penguin Classics, p. 204:
*:God's bones! Whenever I go to beat those knaves / my tapsters, out she [my wife] comes with clubs and staves, / "Go on!" she screams — and its a caterwaul — / "You kill those dogs! Break back and bones and all!"
(cards) A playing card marked with the figure of a servant or soldier; a jack.
A person who lacks courage.
* 1856 : (Gustave Flaubert), (Madame Bovary), Part II Chapter IV, translated by Eleanor Marx-Aveling
Cowardly.
*, II.17:
*:It is a coward and servile humour, for a man to disguise and hide himselfe under a maske, and not dare to shew himselfe as he is.
* Shakespeare
* Prior
(heraldry, of a lion) Borne in the escutcheon with his tail doubled between his legs.
English words suffixed with -ard
As nouns the difference between knave and coward
is that knave is (archaic) a boy; especially, a boy servant while coward is a person who lacks courage.As an adjective coward is
cowardly.knave
English
Noun
(en noun)Synonyms
* See alsoDerived terms
* knavery * knavishcoward
English
Noun
(en noun)- He tortured himself to find out how he could make his declaration to her, and always halting between the fear of displeasing her and the shame of being such a coward , he wept with discouragement and desire. Then he took energetic resolutions, wrote letters that he tore up, put it off to times that he again deferred.
Synonyms
* chicken * See alsoDerived terms
* cowardly * cowardiceAdjective
(en adjective)- He raised the house with loud and coward cries.
- Invading fears repel my coward joy.