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Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
cower
verb
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ ADVERB
back
▪ If you see the audience cowering back, you are too loud.
▪ Dougal cowered back, praying that no one would hear it.
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ They were cowering in the cellars, trapped by the shelling.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ Her fragile sanity crept away from the edge to cower inside the fortress of her orders.
▪ Miriam cowered in terror, her hand up to her throat.
▪ Students cowered in classrooms as the gun shots rang out.
▪ The dailies would clock him every now and then, leaving his flat and cowering under a flash of camera light.
▪ While the menace may be unstoppable, infection-control doctors are not cowering helplessly.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Cower

Cower \Cow"er\ (kou"[~e]r), v. i. [imp. & p. p. Cowered (kou"[~e]rd); p. pr. & vb. n. Cowering.] [Cf. Icel. kera to doze, liequiet, Sw. kura, Dan. kure, G. kauern to cower, W. cwrian.] To stoop by bending the knees; to crouch; to squat; hence, to quail; to sink through fear.

Our dame sits cowering o'er a kitchen fire.
--Dryden.

Like falcons, cowering on the nest.
--Goldsmith.

Cower

Cower \Cow"er\ (kou"[~e]r), v. t. To cherish with care. [Obs.]

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
cower

c.1300, probably from Middle Low German *kuren "lie in wait" (Modern German kauern), or similar Scandinavian words meaning "to squat" and "to doze" (such as Old Norse kura, Danish, Norwegian kure, Swedish kura). Thus unrelated to coward. Related: Cowered; cowering.

Wiktionary
cower

Etymology 1 vb. (cx intransitive English) To crouch or cringe, or to avoid or shy away from something, in fear. Etymology 2

vb. (context obsolete transitive English) To cherish with care.

WordNet
cower
  1. v. crouch or curl up; "They huddled outside in the rain" [syn: huddle]

  2. show submission or fear [syn: fawn, crawl, creep, cringe, grovel]

Usage examples of "cower".

Tell me who He is, why He allows the foulest hyenas of our society to run amuck while decent men and women cower in terror behind Fox locks and Dictograph systems.

If, as has chanced to others--as chanced, for example, to Mangan-- outcast from home, health and hope, with a charred past and a bleared future, an anchorite without detachment and self-cloistered without self-sufficingness, deposed from a world which he had not abdicated, pierced with thorns which formed no crown, a poet hopeless of the bays and a martyr hopeless of the palm, a land cursed against the dews of love, an exile banned and proscribed even from the innocent arms of childhood--he were burning helpless at the stake of his unquenchable heart, then he might have been inconsolable, then might he have cast the gorge at life, then have cowered in the darkening chamber of his being, tapestried with mouldering hopes, and hearkened to the winds that swept across the illimitable wastes of death.

Yes, answering nothing, he shrank into the corner and cowered there, while Simbri, taking Atene by the hand, went from the room.

Was she breathing those words now up there, cowering in the cold with Beane at her side?

They were afraid of him, the mangey dogs, as well they might belet them cower before Loddlaen the Mighty, Master of the Powers of Air!

As the evening deepened the quaintest noises began on every hand--noises so strange and bewildering that as I cowered down with my teeth chattering, and stared hard into the impenetrable, they could be likened to nothing but the crying of all the souls of dead things since the beginning.

Angrily she whirled around, flinging the hood back to her shoulders, and the bondsman cowered away, covering his head with his arms as if more afraid of her than any club his tormentor would use.

She wondered at news that could send an entire citizenry cowering in the gloom of their private dwellings.

He shouted something at the cougar, but the creature cowered on its sinking brash, away from the platform and the grasping human arm.

She might be cowering there on the cold, dark shoreline right this minute!

The shadows of trees to the west lengthened, clutching at the cowering Runners like claws.

A sign will be easier to find with everyone cowering behind barred doors.

The other trader flung himself sideways, cowering on the paving stones.

Most, however, stay cowering in their beds, mindful of the fact that Ki has had citizens executed in the past for seeing things they were not meant to see.

I pretend to be cowering helplessly, but there is still power in my armor to compensate for my fatigued muscles.