What's the difference between cowardly and heroic?

Cowardly


Definition:

  • (a.) Wanting courage; basely or weakly timid or fearful; pusillanimous; spiritless.
  • (a.) Proceeding from fear of danger or other consequences; befitting a coward; dastardly; base; as, cowardly malignity.
  • (adv.) In the manner of a coward.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) An unprincipled coward with the backbone of an amoeba."
  • (2) But cowardly useful idiots of Warwick have banned @MaryamNamazie.” On Sunday night the union released a statement reversing the decision, which it stated had gone against normal procedures.
  • (3) On Wednesday she declared that if Sir Gideon had sent Chloe Smith unprotected on to Newsnight, then he was "cowardly as well as arrogant".
  • (4) Extensive research among the Afghan National Army – 68 focus groups – and US military personnel alike concluded: "One group sees the other as a bunch of violent, reckless, intrusive, arrogant, self-serving profane, infidel bullies hiding behind high technology; and the other group [the US soldiers] generally views the former as a bunch of cowardly, incompetent, obtuse, thieving, complacent, lazy, pot-smoking, treacherous, and murderous radicals.
  • (5) But in recent years, directors have sought out the likes of Radiohead's Jonny Greenwood ( There Will Be Blood ), the Chemical Brothers ( Hanna ) and Nick Cave ( The Assassination of Jesse James By the Coward Robert Ford ).
  • (6) Africans yelled at the police, "Cowards" and "Kill the white men."
  • (7) The only real black spot was that a cowardly Britain stood by in the 1930s and allowed Hitler and Mussolini to help General Franco win the Spanish civil war , pushing it into dictatorship and encouraging Nazi Germany to launch the second world war.
  • (8) It resulted in a royal command performance, a big hit and an Oscar win for Coward.
  • (9) It’s just one in a long line of cowardly and slimy moves by Ryan, who is really just Trump in a more aesthetically appealing wrapper.
  • (10) Though he strongly disapproved of much of what later took shape as "New Labour", which he saw, among other things, as historically cowardly, he was without question the single most influential intellectual forerunner of Labour's increasingly iconoclastic 1990s revisionism.
  • (11) I don’t know who you think you are, you cowardly, small-minded xenophobe who did this, but you do not speak for the community,” he added.
  • (12) An emotional Obama ran through a litany of Isis human-rights abuses, from rape to enslavement, calling them “cowardly acts of violence.” In a vague reference to Americans held captive by Isis or near its path in Iraq, Obama said the US would “do everything we can to protect our people,” a formulation that has preceded US military action in the past.
  • (13) Erase even more, you cowardly regime,” Abo Bakr wrote on a wall in a message to the whitewashers.
  • (14) With Veep , rather than striving young idealists, you have cowardly egomaniacs and bunglers who are involved in endless arse-covering exercises.
  • (15) Some of the strongest criticism came from Travis Tygaart, the head of Usada, who called the cyber attacks “cowardly and despicable” and reiterated that the athletes named had done nothing wrong.
  • (16) But it's fair to say a fondness for sniping games marks me out as a coward who'd rather take potshots from a distance than actually climb down from the tree and enter the fray like a man, a theory backed up by the fact that while I love sniping, I detest "stealth games" (because it's scary when you get caught) and "boss fights" where you have to battle some gargantuan show-off 10 times your height who keeps knocking you on your arse with his tail.
  • (17) With these unmanned craft, governments can fight a coward's war, a god's war, harming only the unnamed.
  • (18) Photograph: Reuters Elizabeth Bourgault, a runner who survived the blasts with injuries, also called Tsarnaev a coward.
  • (19) Conceived as a "response" to Ben Affleck's Oscar-nominated take on the 1979 hostage crisis, it promises a tale of cowardly US diplomats who are treated with kindness and eventually delivered to safety by their Iranian hosts.
  • (20) "I think there is only one explanation about this: that the family has been the victim of repressive measures, which are cruel and cowardly."

Heroic


Definition:

  • (a.) Of or pertaining to, or like, a hero; of the nature of heroes; distinguished by the existence of heroes; as, the heroic age; an heroic people; heroic valor.
  • (a.) Worthy of a hero; bold; daring; brave; illustrious; as, heroic action; heroic enterprises.
  • (a.) Larger than life size, but smaller than colossal; -- said of the representation of a human figure.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) "The performance of Italy and France kind of puts Ireland's heroic non-qualification in context," suggests Sean DeLoughry, giving everyone pause for thought.
  • (2) But 30 minutes before takeoff on our private jet – like a top-end Lexus limo with wings – actress Rosamund Pike has heroically stepped in for the year's hot meal ticket: an El Bulli supper, pitch perfect for a selection of rare champagne, devised by Adrià with Richard Geoffroy, Dom Pérignon's effervescent chef de cave.
  • (3) Sudden cardiac death is frequently an unexpected first clinical manifestation of coronary artery disease and, despite heroic efforts, treatment of sudden death victims is frequently unsuccessful.
  • (4) The popular appeal of the "School Shield" program hinges on believing in heroics; good public policy depends on preventing the need for them.
  • (5) As part of Return of Forces to Germany 1990, a number of Second Armored Division soldiers participated in the heroic rescue of German and American civilians injured in a 32-vehicle crash on an autobahn in West Germany.
  • (6) The first unstable six years of his presidency may not have provided a heroic record, but his second term proved to be important in the restoration of democracy to his country.
  • (7) As a result of the blast, there were martyrs and wounded among our heroic armed comrades,” the military said.
  • (8) At a press conference held outside the temple on Sunday, Oak Creek police chief John Edwards said the "heroic actions" of the two officers "stopped this from being worse than it could have been", noting that many people had gathered for worship at the time of the attack.
  • (9) Such approaches, while often heroic and unusually creative in character, have limited the exportability of hardware or software products to the larger biomedical community.
  • (10) Consequently, the assumption or normative postulate of a 'rational' (scientific) risk assessment and risk management appears to be utterly heroic and, in the end, misleading.
  • (11) Point one read: “Create the rebirth of heroical behavioural ideals of an artist-intellectual… the artist as romantic hero, who prevails over evil.
  • (12) It is part horror-show, part cautionary tale, and partly heroic example.
  • (13) Manufacturing is weak and weakening ; the employment gap between the rich and the poor is the widest on record ; the economic recovery is actually more like an extended stagnation with 12 million people unemployed; the housing "recovery" will be stalled as long as incomes are low and house prices are high ; and quantitative easing as a stimulus, while a heroic independent effort by the Federal Reserve, is past its due date and is no longer improving the country's fortunes beyond the stock market .
  • (14) And I think Chinese media are going to play it out in a very heroic way."
  • (15) Yet there was heroic virtue in the man, in the way he answered the demands of his day job as a civil servant and then devoted what ought to have been free time for his own work to responding to the work of others.
  • (16) The diplomats told Washington that certain themes in American movies seemed to appeal to the Saudi audience: heroic honesty in the face of corruption (George Clooney in Michael Clayton), supportive behaviour in relationships (an unspecified drama that was repeated during an Eid holiday featuring an American husband dealing with a drunk wife who smashed cars and crockery when she wasn't assaulting him and their child), and respect for the law over self-interest (Al Pacino and Robin Williams in Insomnia).
  • (17) And then there's her heroically blunt songs, such as You're Gonna Die Soon , performed to a group of octogenarians.
  • (18) Comrades from the heroic anti-colonial days retired, drifted away or were pushed out – in the case of President Devan Nair in 1985, after a humiliating allegation of alcoholism that he contested.
  • (19) On Tuesday Khamenei used the expression "heroic leniency", which is being interpreted as a euphemism for a softer stance on foreign policy.
  • (20) "This heroic gesture by Hazara families [in Quetta] has inspired ordinary citizens and Pakistan's scared civil society to come out and be counted and basically put an end to terrorism.