Word of the Day for Tuesday May 31, 2005 recreant \REK-ree-uhnt\, adjective:1. Cowardly; craven.2. Unfaithful; disloyal. noun:1. A coward.2. An unfaithful or disloyal person. His recreant companion disappears around the fence, but he remains, smiling affably. --Eric J. Segal, "Norman Rockwell and the fashioning of American masculinity," Art Bulletin, December 1, 1996 To any man there may come at times a consciousness that there blows, through all the articulations of his body, the wind of a spirit not wholly his; that his mind rebels; that another girds him and carries him whither he would not. . . . The open door was closed in his recreant face. --Genie Babb, "Where the bodies are buried," Narrative, October 1, 2002 Wordsworth compares himself to a truant, a false steward, a recreant, when he does not write poetry, when poetic numbers fail to come spontaneously, when his harp is defrauded and the singer ends in silence. --J. Douglas Kneale, "Majestic Indolence: English Romantic Poetry and the Work of Art," Criticism, September 22, 1996 And it appears in the way the review essay was set up: Aronson versus Miliband, the recreant versus the faithful one. --Ronald Aronson, "Response to Victor Wallis," Monthly Review, October 1, 1996 But was it worth surrendering your religion, hence your honor, and becoming a recreant? --Eugen Weber, "The Ups and Downs of Honor," American Scholar, January 1, 1999 Recreant comes from Old French, from the present participle of recroire, "to yield in a trial by battle," from re-, "re-" + croire, "to believe," from Latin credere. Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation for recreant