tim'rous

In one will sit a rosy cheek'd maiden with a fetching bonnet in a suitably rural setting; in others: a red, red rose; a horse with no tail and a tim'rous beastie that, on closer inspection, will bear a resemblance to a mouse.

Poor Robert Burns. He deserves better than this | Kevin McKenna 2012

There are mice like Robert Burns described, a "wee, sleekit, cow'rin, tim'rous beastie."

Father Of '$100 Laptop' Thwacks Critics 2006

There are mice like Robert Burns described, a "wee, sleekit, cow'rin, tim'rous beastie."

Faces Of The Week: Apr. 3-7, 2006 Forbes.com staff 2006

As for the press and television, so tigerish when Bill Clinton presided, except for a few audacious malcontents (notable among them the artful female columnists Molly Ivins, Mary McGrory, and Maureen Dowd) they mostly turned into tim'rous beasties.

The Awful Truth Baker, Russell 2003

He disturbs a mouse's nest and finds in the "tim'rous beastie" a fellow-mortal doomed like himself to "thole the winter's sleety dribble," and draws his oft-repeated moral.

Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" Various

The mouse of Scotland has been fortunate in her painters; another, and a still better portrait was to be made of the "wee, sleekit, cowrin, tim'rous beastie," by the great poet of the nation, Robert Burns.

A Literary History of the English People From the Origins to the Renaissance Jean Jules Jusserand

"A rare sweet maid her be," they said of her in the village, "but terribul tim'rous, and I lay her ladyship du give she a rare time of it ...."

The Imaginary Marriage Henry St. John Cooper

He had felt at the time that "Wee sleekit, cowrin ', tim'rous beastie" was but a poor rejoinder.

"Wee Tim'rous Beasties" Studies of Animal life and Character Douglas English

There is the field mouse -- the "wee sleekit, * cow'rin ', tim'rous beastie," whose nest he turned up and destroyed in his November plowing.

English Literature for Boys and Girls

Any more than they did when Sir JOHN SUCKLING apostrophised the "wee, sleekit, cow'rin ', tim'rous beastie."

Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, December 22, 1920 Various 1898