faintling

comparative more faintling · superlative most faintling

1. Timorous; feeble-minded.

plural faintlings

1. One who is faint, feeble, or weak.

   Strong, strong, ever on, Strong in our hope increasing; Heed not the faintling's fall, Nor eyes that on ye look coldly.

   1901, Socialist songs with music

   2 more examples

   And for a weak and peevish youth, a faintling, A boy of a girl's temper; one who shrinks Trembling and crouching at a look, a word, A lifted ringer, like a beaten hound.

   1823, THE LITERARY CHRONICLE, page 178

   The modem preacher takes a few tablets of the doctrine of Christ, dissolves them in a gallon or two of sentimental rose water, puts a little of the solution in an atomizer, and sprays the congregation to the tune of “sweet spirited” Christianity and the fragrance of a benevolent life if, by evaporation, the solution becomes too strong he always has an abundance of pink tea handy to revive the faintlings who may have been overcome by too strong a dose.

   1968?, Dub McClish, Preachers and Preaching