It reminded me of a time thirteen centuries away, when the "poor whites" of our South who were always despised and frequently insulted by the slave-lords around them, and who owed their base condition simply to the presence of slavery in their midst, were yet
pusillanimously ready to side with the slave-lords in all political moves for the upholding and perpetuating of slavery, and did also finally shoulder their muskets and pour out their lives in an effort to prevent the destruction of that very institution which degraded them.
A party which is confident in its own values would protect its flanks, not
pusillanimously try to tack further to the right.
But a world in which we do what we can about the poverty we encounter, and then do our best to cope with the consequences as they arise, is a better world than one in which we
pusillanimously allow our neighbors to languish in a poverty that we could alleviate if we would.
Those who conformed too readily and
pusillanimously could bump the bruise of national pride in their less abject compatriots by making the Scots seem craven in their abasement of themselves before their superior neighbours; they also ran the risk of appearing to try to put supercilious distance between themselves and their fellow countrymen.
Here Count Guido, for the first and only time in Day Ten, employs the adjective magnanimo, contrasted to its antonym, pusillanimo: "By yielding to your passion," the count warns the king, "you will act, not at all magnanimously, but rather
pusillanimously, as a worthless and vile adolescent" ("'Questo non e atto di re magnanimo anzi d'un pusillanimo giovinetto'" 10.6.29).
1888) were elderly civilians, and might be forgiven for acting
pusillanimously. Heath was different.
Arrested by German border officials, the little man volubly protests his innocence: conduct conforming to Nazi thinking, for this is how Jews were expected to behave:
pusillanimously. But then old Fuss-and-Fidget has his moment of quiet heroism as he is led away past his former travel companions, looking at them without a sign of recognition.