See recreant in All languages combined, or Wiktionary
{
"derived": [
{
"_dis1": "0 0",
"word": "recreance"
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{
"_dis1": "0 0",
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{
"_dis1": "0 0",
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"4": "",
"5": "defeated"
},
"expansion": "Middle French recreant (“defeated”)",
"name": "der"
}
],
"etymology_text": "From Middle English recreaunt, from Anglo-Norman and Middle French recreant (“defeated”), from recroire (“to yield in a trial by combat, surrender allegiance”). Compare miscreant.",
"forms": [
{
"form": "more recreant",
"tags": [
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{
"ref": "1387, Geoffrey Chaucer, Canterbury Tales, Part 3: \"The Parson's Tale\":",
"text": "Soothly, he that despeireth hym is lyk\nThe coward champious recreant, that seith,\nCreant withoute nede, allas! akkas! bedekes us\nHe recreant and nedelees despeired.\n[Translation by Larry D. Benson from Riverside Chaucer: Truly, he that despairs himself is like the cowardly defeated champion, who says \"I surrender\" without need. Alas, alas, needless is he defeated and needless in despair.]",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "1596, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, V.11:",
"text": "For, from the day that he thus did it leave, / Amongst all Knights he blotted was with blame, / And counted but a recreant Knight with endles shame.",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "1759, William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England, Book 3, Chapter 22, concerning trials by battle:",
"text": "[V]ictory is obtained if either champion proves recreant, that is, yields, and pronounces the horrible word of craven; a word of disgrace and obloquy rather than of any determinate meaning. But a horrible word it indeed is to the vanquished champion; since, as a punishment to him for forfeiting the land of his principal by pronouncing that shameful word, he is condemned as a recreant amittere liberam legem, that is, to become infamous, and not to be accounted liber et legalis homo; being supposed by the event to be proved forsworn, and therefore never to be put upon a jury or admitted as a witness in any cause.",
"type": "quote"
}
],
"glosses": [
"Having admitted defeat and surrendered; defeated."
],
"id": "en-recreant-en-adj-oVsuoL6n",
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"(now rare, poetic) Having admitted defeat and surrendered; defeated."
],
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{
"ref": "1671, John Milton, “The Third Book”, in Paradise Regain’d. A Poem. In IV Books. To which is Added, Samson Agonistes, London: […] J[ohn] M[acock] for John Starkey […], →OCLC, page 61:",
"text": "Who, for ſo many benefits receiv'd, / Turn'd recreant to God, ingrate and falſe, / And ſo of all true good himſelf deſpoil'd, […]",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "1793, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Christabel:",
"text": "And let the recreant traitors seek / My tourney court […].",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "1854, Henry David Thoreau, Slavery in Massachusetts:",
"text": "But, thank fortune, this preacher can be even more easily reached by the weapons of the reformer than could the recreant priest.",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "1855, William Wells Brown, chapter 27, in Sketches of Places and People Abroad:",
"text": "I charge it to the recreant sons of the men who carried on the American revolutionary war, and who come together every fourth of July to boast of what their fathers did, while they, their sons, have become associated with bloodhounds, to be put at any moment on the track of the fugitive slave.",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "1890, Henry James, The Tragic Muse:",
"text": "Gabriel did not attack him however. He brought in only blandness and benevolence and a great content at having obeyed the mystic voice—it was really a remarkable case of second sight—which had whispered to him that the recreant comrade of his prime was in town.",
"type": "quote"
}
],
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"Unfaithful to someone, or to one's duties or honour; disloyal, false."
],
"id": "en-recreant-en-adj-uvyhsHV4",
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"(now poetic, literary) Unfaithful to someone, or to one's duties or honour; disloyal, false."
],
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"poetic"
]
}
],
"sounds": [
{
"ipa": "/ˈɹɛkɹɪənt/",
"tags": [
"UK"
]
},
{
"ipa": "/ˈɹɛkɹiənt/",
"tags": [
"General-American"
]
}
],
"word": "recreant"
}
{
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"3": "recreaunt"
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"expansion": "Middle English recreaunt",
"name": "inh"
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{
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"1": "en",
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"3": "-"
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"expansion": "Anglo-Norman",
"name": "der"
},
{
"args": {
"1": "en",
"2": "frm",
"3": "recreant",
"4": "",
"5": "defeated"
},
"expansion": "Middle French recreant (“defeated”)",
"name": "der"
}
],
"etymology_text": "From Middle English recreaunt, from Anglo-Norman and Middle French recreant (“defeated”), from recroire (“to yield in a trial by combat, surrender allegiance”). Compare miscreant.",
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"examples": [
{
"ref": "1928, Montague Summers, chapter 3, in The Vampire, His Kith and Kin:",
"text": "[I]n the Choephoroe of Aeschylus Orestes pursues the same idea saying that unless he avenges his father, a stern duty which has devolved upon him, he will be punished in turn by the avengers of his father's wrongs. It may be remarked that in Maina to-day no recourse must be had to law for such cases, nor must the injured person satisfy himself by calling upon the aid of the police. To do this were incredibly base, the subterfuge of a recreant and a craven.",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "2024 June 12, Matthew Karnitschnig, “Time runs out for Olaf Scholz”, in Politico:",
"text": "If Scholz believed he could dodge a reckoning after his party was beaten into a humiliating third place by the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, he, like most recreants, is likely mistaken.",
"type": "quote"
}
],
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"Somebody who is recreant, who yields in combat; a coward or traitor."
],
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{
"word": "apostate"
},
{
"word": "coward"
},
{
"word": "deserter"
},
{
"word": "poltroon"
},
{
"word": "renegade"
},
{
"word": "turncoat"
}
]
}
],
"sounds": [
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"ipa": "/ˈɹɛkɹɪənt/",
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},
{
"ipa": "/ˈɹɛkɹiənt/",
"tags": [
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}
],
"word": "recreant"
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"word": "recreance"
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{
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"superlative"
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{
"ref": "1387, Geoffrey Chaucer, Canterbury Tales, Part 3: \"The Parson's Tale\":",
"text": "Soothly, he that despeireth hym is lyk\nThe coward champious recreant, that seith,\nCreant withoute nede, allas! akkas! bedekes us\nHe recreant and nedelees despeired.\n[Translation by Larry D. Benson from Riverside Chaucer: Truly, he that despairs himself is like the cowardly defeated champion, who says \"I surrender\" without need. Alas, alas, needless is he defeated and needless in despair.]",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "1596, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, V.11:",
"text": "For, from the day that he thus did it leave, / Amongst all Knights he blotted was with blame, / And counted but a recreant Knight with endles shame.",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "1759, William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England, Book 3, Chapter 22, concerning trials by battle:",
"text": "[V]ictory is obtained if either champion proves recreant, that is, yields, and pronounces the horrible word of craven; a word of disgrace and obloquy rather than of any determinate meaning. But a horrible word it indeed is to the vanquished champion; since, as a punishment to him for forfeiting the land of his principal by pronouncing that shameful word, he is condemned as a recreant amittere liberam legem, that is, to become infamous, and not to be accounted liber et legalis homo; being supposed by the event to be proved forsworn, and therefore never to be put upon a jury or admitted as a witness in any cause.",
"type": "quote"
}
],
"glosses": [
"Having admitted defeat and surrendered; defeated."
],
"links": [
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"defeat",
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],
[
"surrendered",
"surrendered"
],
[
"defeated",
"defeated"
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"(now rare, poetic) Having admitted defeat and surrendered; defeated."
],
"tags": [
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"ref": "1671, John Milton, “The Third Book”, in Paradise Regain’d. A Poem. In IV Books. To which is Added, Samson Agonistes, London: […] J[ohn] M[acock] for John Starkey […], →OCLC, page 61:",
"text": "Who, for ſo many benefits receiv'd, / Turn'd recreant to God, ingrate and falſe, / And ſo of all true good himſelf deſpoil'd, […]",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "1793, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Christabel:",
"text": "And let the recreant traitors seek / My tourney court […].",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "1854, Henry David Thoreau, Slavery in Massachusetts:",
"text": "But, thank fortune, this preacher can be even more easily reached by the weapons of the reformer than could the recreant priest.",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "1855, William Wells Brown, chapter 27, in Sketches of Places and People Abroad:",
"text": "I charge it to the recreant sons of the men who carried on the American revolutionary war, and who come together every fourth of July to boast of what their fathers did, while they, their sons, have become associated with bloodhounds, to be put at any moment on the track of the fugitive slave.",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "1890, Henry James, The Tragic Muse:",
"text": "Gabriel did not attack him however. He brought in only blandness and benevolence and a great content at having obeyed the mystic voice—it was really a remarkable case of second sight—which had whispered to him that the recreant comrade of his prime was in town.",
"type": "quote"
}
],
"glosses": [
"Unfaithful to someone, or to one's duties or honour; disloyal, false."
],
"links": [
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],
[
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],
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"(now poetic, literary) Unfaithful to someone, or to one's duties or honour; disloyal, false."
],
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}
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"tags": [
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"name": "der"
}
],
"etymology_text": "From Middle English recreaunt, from Anglo-Norman and Middle French recreant (“defeated”), from recroire (“to yield in a trial by combat, surrender allegiance”). Compare miscreant.",
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{
"ref": "1928, Montague Summers, chapter 3, in The Vampire, His Kith and Kin:",
"text": "[I]n the Choephoroe of Aeschylus Orestes pursues the same idea saying that unless he avenges his father, a stern duty which has devolved upon him, he will be punished in turn by the avengers of his father's wrongs. It may be remarked that in Maina to-day no recourse must be had to law for such cases, nor must the injured person satisfy himself by calling upon the aid of the police. To do this were incredibly base, the subterfuge of a recreant and a craven.",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "2024 June 12, Matthew Karnitschnig, “Time runs out for Olaf Scholz”, in Politico:",
"text": "If Scholz believed he could dodge a reckoning after his party was beaten into a humiliating third place by the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, he, like most recreants, is likely mistaken.",
"type": "quote"
}
],
"glosses": [
"Somebody who is recreant, who yields in combat; a coward or traitor."
],
"links": [
[
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"coward"
],
[
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]
]
}
],
"sounds": [
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},
{
"ipa": "/ˈɹɛkɹiənt/",
"tags": [
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}
],
"synonyms": [
{
"word": "apostate"
},
{
"word": "coward"
},
{
"word": "deserter"
},
{
"word": "poltroon"
},
{
"word": "renegade"
},
{
"word": "turncoat"
}
],
"word": "recreant"
}
Download raw JSONL data for recreant meaning in English (7.8kB)
This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-12-21 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-12-04 using wiktextract (d8cb2f3 and 4e554ae). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.
If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.