pusillanimous

pusillanimous \pyoo-suh-LAN-uh-muhs\, adjective:

Lacking in courage and resolution; contemptibly fearful; cowardly.

Evil, unspeakable evil, rose in our midst, and we as a people were too weak, too indecisive, too pusillanimous to deal with it.
-- Kevin Myers, "An Irishman's Diary", Irish Times, October 20, 1999

Under the hypnosis of war hysteria, with a pusillanimous Congress rubber-stamping every whim of the White House, we passed the withholding tax.
-- Vivien Kellems, Toil, Taxes and Trouble

You are now anxious to form excuses to yourself for a conduct so pusillanimous.
-- Ann Radcliffe, The Italian

Pusillanimous comes from Late Latin pusillanimis, from Latin pusillus, "very small, tiny, puny" + animus, "soul, mind."