Meaning

(now rare, poetic) Having admitted defeat and surrendered; defeated..

Definitions by Sense

1. (now rare, poetic) Having admitted defeat and surrendered; defeated.
2. (now poetic, literary) Unfaithful to someone, or to one's duties or honour; disloyal, false.
3. Somebody who is recreant, who yields in combat; a coward or traitor.

Example Sentences

Soothly, he that despeireth hym is lyk The coward champious recreant, that seith, Creant withoute nede, allas! akkas! bedekes us He recreant and nedelees despeired. [Translation by Larry D. Benson from Riverside Chaucer: Truly, he that despairs himself is like the cowardly defeated champion, who says "I surrender" without need. Alas, alas, needless is he defeated and needless in despair.]

For, from the day that he thus did it leave, / Amongst all Knights he blotted was with blame, / And counted but a recreant Knight with endles shame.

[V]ictory is obtained if either champion proves recreant, that is, yields, and pronounces the horrible word of craven; a word of disgrace and obloquy rather than of any determinate meaning. But a horrible word it indeed is to the vanquished champion; since, as a punishment to him for forfeiting the land of his principal by pronouncing that shameful word, he is condemned as a recreant amittere liberam legem, that is, to become infamous, and not to be accounted liber et legalis homo; being supposed by the event to be proved forsworn, and therefore never to be put upon a jury or admitted as a witness in any cause.

Who, for ſo many benefits receiv'd, / Turn'd recreant to God, ingrate and falſe, / And ſo of all true good himſelf deſpoil'd, […]

And let the recreant traitors seek / My tourney court […].

But, thank fortune, this preacher can be even more easily reached by the weapons of the reformer than could the recreant priest.

I charge it to the recreant sons of the men who carried on the American revolutionary war, and who come together every fourth of July to boast of what their fathers did, while they, their sons, have become associated with bloodhounds, to be put at any moment on the track of the fugitive slave.

Gabriel did not attack him however. He brought in only blandness and benevolence and a great content at having obeyed the mystic voice—it was really a remarkable case of second sight—which had whispered to him that the recreant comrade of his prime was in town.

Word Forms

• more recreant
• most recreant
• recreants

Synonyms for recreant

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When Should You Use Recreant?

Use recreant when its meaning, tone and grammar fit the full sentence. A synonym is not always a direct replacement.

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