a. [f. as prec. + -ED2.] Having a faint heart; wanting energy, courage, or will to carry a thing through; timid, cowardly. Also absol.
c. 1440. Promp. Parv., 153. Feynt hertyd, vecors.
1535. Coverdale, 1 Sam. xiii. 7. All the people were fayntharted after him.
1631. Gouge, God’s Arrows, V. xi. 421. A few white-liverd, faint-hearted souldiers have oft beene the ruine of a great strong Army which hath beene put to rout by reason of their fainting, and yeelding.
1723. De Foe, Col. Jack (1840), 17. I find you are faint-hearted, and to be faint-hearted is indeed to be unfit for our trade, for nothing but a bold heart can go through stitch with this work.
1843. Bethune, Sc. Fireside Stor., 54. Young fellows like you, are sometimes faint-hearted when they must come to the scratch in matrimonial matters.
1871. Freeman, Norm. Conq. (1876), IV. xviii. 145. At Exeter, as everywhere else, the mass of the people were patriotic; but a fainthearted, if not a traitorous, faction soon began to show itself among those of higher degree.
absol. a. 1600. Hooker, Eccl. Pol. (1617), 746. The punishment threatned in Revelat. 21. viz. the Lake, and Fire, and Brimstone, not onely to Murtherers, unclean Persons, Sorcerers, Idolaters, Lyers, but also to the fearful and faint-hearted.
1847. Emerson, Repr. Men, Goethe, Wks. (Bohn), I. 395. The disadvantages of any epoch exist only to the faint-hearted.
Hence Faint-heartedly adv., in a fainthearted manner. Faint-heartedness, the quality or state of being fainthearted; timidity, cowardice.
1580. Hollyband, Treas. Fr. Tong, Laschement … faint hartedly. Ibid., Couardise … fainthartednesse.
1605. Bp. Hall, Medit. & Vows, II. § 76. To finde such fainthartednes in myselfe at the first conceit of death.
1671. H. M., trans. Erasmus Colloq., 110. But how many Christians dye very faint-heartedly?
1753. N. Torriano, Gangr. Sore Throat, 60. A Faint-heartedness … always accompanies Putrefaction and Insensibility.
1874. Motley, Barneveld (1879), II. xi. 26. Baffled … by the faintheartedness of his nominal friends.
1876. Mrs. Whitney, Sights and Insights, xi. 120. ‘It is such a responsibility to take, to touch such things at all,’ I said, faint-heartedly.
