(v. i.) To stoop by bending the knees; to crouch; to squat; hence, to quail; to sink through fear.
(v. t.) To cherish with care.
Example Sentences:
(1) Stephen Fisher, one of the archaeologists recording the site, says digging the trenches would also have been training for the men, who would soon have to do it for real, and the little slit trenches scattered across the site, just big enough for one man to cower in, might represent their first efforts.
(2) In the cities worst hit by street fighting, such as Aden, civilians are either cowering at home to avoid sniper fire and bombardment or have joined the more than half million Yemenis forced out of their houses and now looking for food and shelter.
(3) Reporters were initially told that one of Bin Laden's wives was killed while he was using her as a human shield, prompting headlines such as "Osama bin Laden killed cowering behind his 'human shield' wife ".
(4) The trial on Friday heard from defence ballistics expert Tom Wolmarans who testified that it was impossible to be certain how Steenkamp fell when she was hit by bullets, challenging the prosecution's implication that she might have been cowering in fear.
(5) The special constable found his driver, cowered behind her shield and watched a brick fly through the air, strike the ground and split in two.
(6) Infantile delivery also frequently serves to take the curse off self-publicity; sleight of hand for those who find "my programme is on BBC2 tonight" too presumptuous and exposing, and prefer to cower behind the low-status imbecility of "I done rote a fingy for da tellybox!"
(7) Facebook Twitter Pinterest Ed Miliband challenges David Cameron to name a date for a TV debate The Labour leader renewed his call to Cameron to face him in the one-on-one debate proposed by broadcasters on 30 April, saying that the prime minister was “cowering from the public”.
(8) The chilling claim that we are all surrounded by an invisible peril was the prelude to evoking an evil that we had long thought was behind us, with May declaring: "It is walking our streets, supplying shops and supermarkets, working in fields, factories or nail bars, trapped in brothels or cowering behind the curtains in an ordinary street: slavery."
(9) The Labour party have been hiding in the shadows and cowering in fear.
(10) The Prison Service launched an investigation after footage filmed in Forest Bank showed an inmate, who appeared to be hallucinating because of the effect of drugs, writhing on a bed in his cell and cowering in fear at the sight of an apple.
(11) Photograph: Christopher Thomond for the Guardian I don't drink as a rule, but one proud little abode cowering in the shadow of the monstrosity that is the Beetham Tower is a lovely little old Manchester boozer.
(12) Mangena said Steenkamp was shot in the right hip and was cowering when she was hit in the head.
(13) State radio went dead, and fearful residents cowered in their homes.
(14) He is cowering in the tradition of silence that he inherited,” said Jason Tompkins, an organizer with Black Lives Matter of Chicago.
(15) Furthermore, reading through his old interviews, it seems this is very much the new, improved, media-friendly Richard Ayoade: one journalist who encountered him just as the IT Crowd broke found him "cowering" behind his glasses and complaining that he was "terrible at talking, with words".
(16) Survivors fled into three eastern enclaves where the Bosnian republican army had resisted: Goražde, Žepa and Srebrenica, their populations swelled by displaced deportees, cowering, bombarded relentlessly and largely cut off from supplies of food and medicine.
(17) An age group from 30 to 78 years has been cowered with an average age of 59.
(18) The journey has caused the burger to steam into greyness, glueing itself to its soggy bun.The £32 steak appears, cowering in the corner of its container like a whipped puppy.
(19) Valentina, a 61-year-old market trader in Ilovaysk, said she had spent 23 days cowering in a cellar with several dozen others, and had been threatened by Ukrainian volunteer battalions who tried to use her and others as human shields and stole mobile phones and other property.
(20) For the left upper limb, the site of amputation was at the level of the Cower third of the forearm.
Cringe
Definition:
(v. t.) To draw one's self together as in fear or servility; to bend or crouch with base humility; to wince; hence; to make court in a degrading manner; to fawn.
(v. t.) To contract; to draw together; to cause to shrink or wrinkle; to distort.
(n.) Servile civility; fawning; a shrinking or bowing, as in fear or servility.
Example Sentences:
(1) One test he passed: he could say he loved his country, its values and its spirit without causing a toe-curling cringe.
(2) Inequality, precarity and social division are the causes of our new callousness, helped by the rightwing press, but the real point is that Labour has only two choices in response: either continue to cringe before the prejudices of the public or try to change their minds by arguing for a distinct, simple and compelling alternative.
(3) They cringed even more when I used the word “psychosomatic”.
(4) There’s no doubt there are large swaths within the industry who are committed to overturning this divisive hostility towards women, just as there are men who cringe at the term “brogrammer”.
(5) Second-chance Sunday in Gosford In truth, Justin Pasfield’s calamitous goalkeeping against Newcastle last week was about as cringe-worthy as his new hipster beard-haircut combination.
(6) But there are other dimensions to the Games that should be embraced without cringing.
(7) – rather than on the man’s indecent entitlement, grubbiness and criminality.” 'These women are not statistics' – deaths in Australia in 2015 Read more Surely Lay would cringe, then, at comments made by Victorian homicide squad head, detective inspector Mick Hughes, following the brutal and seemingly random killing of 17-year-old schoolgirl, Masa Vukotic, in broad daylight while she was out walking as part of her usual exercise routine.
(8) It also prompted a collective cringe from many in the Republican political establishment, which is now facing the prospect of losing control of the Senate and even the House because of the drag faced by down-ballot candidates campaigning into the headwinds of their presidential nominee.
(9) As baffling as it may be to those of us whose approach to music festivals is to wear the same clothes for the whole weekend, and to think anyone who bothers brushing their teeth is just trying to be fancy, somehow festivals have become – and I cringe so hard as I write this phrase – "trendsetters".
(10) I cringe when I hear our political leadership deliver yet another speech extolling a commitment to fighting extremism, yet in almost the time it takes to draw their next breath, go on to announce cuts to community services groups, the kind of organisations whose roles are vital in addressing the risk factors that leave one vulnerable to extremism.
(11) … You’re going to get what I think, whether you like it or not, whether it makes you cringe every once in a while or not.” Decrying “bickering leaders in Washington DC”, Christie held out his record as a fiscally conservative governor with a record early in his tenure of bipartisan victories as evidence of change he could bring to the national capital.
(12) The composer Charles Ives, for instance, spent his whole career in a sort of cringe, fearfully anticipating the accusation that to make music was a “sissy” activity.
(13) Sometimes I cringe at the lack of awareness of problems they’re causing other road users.
(14) Electrical stimulation of the superior colliculus in rats elicits not only orienting movements, as it does in other mammals, but also behaviours resembling such natural defensive responses as prolonged freezing, cringing, shying, and fast running and jumping.
(15) Nonetheless, some of Bashir's voters' views must be hard to stomach: informed that one of his voters had just told the Guardian that they were voting for Ukip "because Enoch Powell was right," he failed to suppress a cringe before saying: "The world is full of people of different persuasions.
(16) I cringed when I watched Abedin defend her husband Anthony Weiner in a press conference, as he asked New York City voters to support his campaign for mayor in spite of news reports of another sexting affair.
(17) Surely executives will hesitate to begin each sentence with bizarre jargon or a name-dropped reference to "Tony", now that they've cringed when Simon Harwood, Director of Strategic Governance, does it.
(18) People in my family cringe.” It’s too early to determine what impact Trump’s proposal will have, says Ackles, but he expects to hear more about hedge funds in the coming weeks.
(19) The shadow treasury team's response to Clegg's wealth tax proposal was an infantile ya-boo of the kind that makes voters cringe: "Nick Clegg is once again taking the British people for fools.
(20) I felt the mild elation and giggly cringe of executing a well-designed violent manoeuvre in a video game.