wimp out

present singular third person wimps out · participle present wimping out · participle past wimped out · past wimped out

1. derogatoryinformalintransitiveTo back out of something because of cowardice.

   I could have taken a big chunk out of the show that day by wimping out.

   2009 March 1, Dave Itzkoff, “Offering Terror of an Everyday Variety”, in The New York Times, archived from the original on 07 Jul 2020

   2 more examples

   Your son has been a holy terror! He kept getting into trouble and refusing to mind me! After repeatedly trying to get him to behave, I finally gave up. I wimped out. I have the womb to be a parent, but not the backbone.

   2006 January 29, Tom Armstrong, Marvin (comic)

   Meanwhile, the West Bank Palestinian leaders are busy publicly collecting food and blankets to help all those Palestinian civilians brutalized by the Israeli incursion into Gaza, while privately demanding to know from senior Israeli officials why they wimped out and didn’t wipe Hamas in Gaza off the face of earth — casualties be damned.

   2009 February 4, Thomas L. Friedman, “Don’t Try This at Home”, in The New York Times, archived from the original on 26 Jan 2021

   Synonyms: chicken out