31 March 2013

pusillanimous

[pyoo-suh-lan-uh-muhs]

adjective

1. lacking courage or resolution; cowardly; faint-hearted; timid.
2. proceeding from or indicating a cowardly spirit.

Origin:
1580–90; < Late Latin pusillanimis petty-spirited, equivalent to Latin pusill ( us ) very small, petty + -anim ( is ) -spirited, -minded ( anim ( us ) spirit + -is adj. suffix); see -ous

Related forms
pu·sil·lan·i·mous·ly, adverb

Synonyms
1. timorous, fearful, frightened.

Today’s aphorism

Because we do not know when we will die, we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well. And yet everything happens only a certain number of times. And a very small number really.

– Brandon Lee

On this day

31 March 1992 – the Warsaw Pact ends. This was a defence treaty between the Soviet Union and Communist states in Central and Eastern Europe.

31 March 1993 – death of Brandon Lee on set, while filming ‘The Crow’, during a scene in which Lee’s character, Eric Draven, was shot. A real bullet had been lodged in the barrel of the pistol used and when the dummy bullet was loaded and fired, it triggered the real bullet which hit and fatally wounded Lee. Lee is the son of martial arts champion, Bruce Lee. He was to marry his fiance, Eliza Hutton, on 17 April 1993. ‘The Crow’ was dedicated to Brandon and Eliza.

31 March 2005 – death of Terry Schiavo who was the centre of the most prolonged right-to-die case in U.S. history. She had collapsed in 1990 from a cardiac arrest and entered a coma from which she did not recover. Doctors declared her to be in a ’persistent vegetative state’. Her husband petitioned the court in 1998 to remove her feeding tubes, but her parents opposed the request. The case ran from 1998 – 2005 with numerous petitions to either remove the tubes or to keep them in. Terry died 13 days after her feeding tubes were removed on order of the court in 2005.