recreant

1. 1.

   having deserted a cause or principle

   “some provinces had proved recreant”

   “renegade supporters of the usurper”

   Synonymsrenegade

   Similardisloyal
2. 2.

   lacking even the rudiments of courage; abjectly fearful

   “the craven fellow turned and ran”

   “a craven proposal to raise the white flag”

   “this recreant knight”

   Synonymscraven

   Similarcowardly

Other forms of recreant

plural

recreants·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about recreant

What does recreant mean?

recreant means "an abject coward". That is the primary sense; the word has 4 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in recreant?

recreant has 3 syllables: re-cre-ant. The stress falls on "re".

What is another word for recreant?

Close synonyms include poltroon, craven, deserter, apostate, renegade. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is recreant a common word?

recreant is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.