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Cowardice is a trait wherein fear and excess self-concern override doing or saying what is right, good and of help to others or oneself in a time of need—it is the opposite of courage. As a label, "cowardice" indicates a failure of character in the face of a challenge.〔 Dictionary.com: "() lack of courage to face danger, difficulty, opposition, pain, etc." http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/cowardice 〕 Many military codes of justice proscribe cowardice in combat as a crime punishable by death (note the phrase "shot at dawn"). As a retraction of a virtue that many cultures may expect or have expected, cowardice rates as a character flaw which society or its representatives may variously stigmatize or punish. ==Etymology== According to the ''Online Etymology Dictionary'', the word ''coward'' came into English from the Old French word ''coart'' (modern French (''couard'' )), 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" — perhaps from the habit of animals displaying their tails in flight ("turning tail"), or from a dog's habit of putting its tail between its legs when it is afraid or cowed. 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.〔http://faculty.uml.edu/jgarreau/FromFrenchtoEnglish.htm〕 The English surname Coward (as in Noël Coward), however, has the same origin and meaning as the word "cowherd". 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「cowardice」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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