cowardice

According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, the word coward came into English from the Old French word coart (modern French couard), which is a combination of the word for "tail" (Modern French queue, Latin cauda) and an agent noun suffix. It would therefore have meant "one with a tail", which may conjure an image of an animal displaying its tail in flight of fear ("turning tail"), or a dog's habit of putting its tail between its legs when it is afraid. Like many other English words of French origin, this word was introduced in the English language by the French-speaking Normans, after the Norman conquest of England in 1066.{{cite web |url=http://faculty.uml.edu/jgarreau/FromFrenchtoEnglish.htm |title=From French to English:Surprising Etymology |work=Department of Languages of the UMASS Lowell |access-date=16 December 2015 |first=Joseph E. |last=Garreau}}

The English surname Coward (as in Noël Coward), however, has the same origin and meaning as the word "cowherd".

Acts of cowardice have long been punishable by military law, which defines a wide range of cowardly offenses, including desertion in face of the enemy and surrendering to the enemy against orders. The punishment for such acts is typically severe, ranging from corporal punishment to the death sentence."Any person found guilty of desertion or attempt to desert shall be punished, if the offense is committed in time of war, by death or such other punishment as a court-martial may direct, but if the desertion or attempt to desert occurs at any other time, by such punishment, other than death, as a court-martial may direct."

• 10 U.S. Code § 885 - Art. 85.-[https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/10/885 "Desertion"]

The United States military codes of justice define cowardice in combat as a crime punishable by death.{{Cite web|title=10 U.S. Code § 899 - Art. 99. Misbehavior before the enemy|url=https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/10/899|access-date=2020-08-19|website=LII / Legal Information Institute|language=en}}

Generally, cowardice was punishable by execution during World War I, and those who were caught were often court-martialed and, in many cases, executed by firing squad. British soldiers executed for cowardice were often not commemorated on war memorials, and their families often did not receive benefits and had to endure social stigma.{{cite news |title=Executed WW1 soldiers to be given pardons |url=https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2006/aug/16/military.immigrationpolicy |newspaper=The Guardian |date=16 August 2006 |access-date=24 February 2019 |first=Richard |last=Norton-Taylor |author-link=Richard Norton-Taylor |publisher=Guardian News & Media Limited}}{{cite news |title=Call to rethink cases of French WWI 'coward' soldiers |url=https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-24356041 |work=BBC News |date=1 October 2013 |access-date=24 February 2019 |publisher=BBC}} However, many decades later, those soldiers all received posthumous pardons in the UK Armed Forces Act 2006 and have been commemorated with the Shot at Dawn Memorial. Unlike British, Canadian, French, German, and Russian forces, the U.S. military tried soldiers for cowardice, but never followed through with execution while German commanders were less inclined to use execution as a form of punishment.{{cite book |title=World War I Almanac |first=David R. |last=Woodward |page=28 |publisher=Infobase Publishing |year=2009 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=p1aFgdhqYAcC&pg=PA28 |isbn=9781438118963}}

Considerable controversy was generated by military historian S.L.A. Marshall, who claimed that 75% of U.S. combat troops in World War II never fired at the enemy for the purpose of killing, even while under direct threat. Author Dave Grossman attempted to explain these findings in his book On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society. Marshall's findings were later challenged as mistaken or even fabricated,{{cite journal |first=Robert |last=Engen |url=http://www.journal.dnd.ca/vo9/no2/16-engen-eng.asp |title= Killing for Their Country: A New Look At "Killology" |journal=Canadian Military Journal |volume=9 |issue=2 |access-date=8 May 2011 |quote=As a military historian, I am instinctively skeptical of any work or theory that claims to overturn all existing scholarship – indeed, overturn an entire academic discipline – in one fell swoop...[however] Lieutenant Colonel Grossman’s appeals to biology and psychology are flawed, and that the bulwark of his historical evidence – S.L.A. Marshall’s assertion that soldiers do not fire their weapons – can be verifiably disproven. |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110721211742/http://www.journal.dnd.ca/vo9/no2/16-engen-eng.asp |archive-date=21 July 2011}}{{Cite news |title=S.L.A. Marshall and the Ratio of Fire |first=Roger J. |last=Spiller |periodical=RUSI Journal |date=Winter 1988 |pages=63–71 |url=http://www.warchronicle.com/us/combat_historians_wwii/marshallfire.htm |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20051210174158/http://www.warchronicle.com/us/combat_historians_wwii/marshallfire.htm |archive-date=10 December 2005 |via=War Chronicle}}{{cite magazine |url=https://www.americanheritage.com/index.php/content/secret-soldiers-who-didn%E2%80%99t-shoot |title=The Secret Of The Soldiers Who Didn't Shoot |first=Fredric |last=Smoler |magazine=American Heritage |date=March 1989 |volume=40 |issue=2 |access-date=24 February 2019}} and were not replicated in a more rigorous study of Canadian troops in World War II.{{cite thesis |url=http://qspace.library.queensu.ca/bitstream/1974/1081/1/Engen_Robert_C_200803_MA.pdf |title=Canadians Against Fire: Canada's Soldiers and Marshall's "Ratio of Fire" 1944-1945 |first=Robert Charles |last=Engen |date=March 2008 |access-date=24 February 2019 |publisher=Queen's University |location=Kingston, Ontario |pages=142 |hdl=1974/1081|type=Thesis }}

• Fear
• Sissy
• Pussy
• Virtue
• Weakness

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Category:Military law

Category:Fear

Category:Courage