poltroon

Joe tried to grab him with the boathook, but it was useless, and the unhappy poltroon's body was whirled away.

"Then you have been playing the poltroon," he says savagely.

He insulted you, and then he behaved like a poltroon down at Silverbridge, and I will not have you know him any more.

But I can't consent to pass for a fool; and still more not for a poltroon—You'll excuse the little hint.'

My error—and I 'll not forgive myself in haste for it—was the belief that an upstart need not of necessity be a poltroon.