wimp out

wimp out (third-person singular simple present wimps out, present participle wimping out, simple past and past participle wimped out)

1. (informal, derogatory) To back out of something because of cowardice.
   • 2006 January 29, Tom Armstrong, Marvin (comic):

     Your son has been a holy terror! He kept getting into trouble and refusing to mind me! After repeatedly trying to get him to behave, I finally gave up. I wimped out. I have the womb to be a parent, but not the backbone.

   • 2009 February 4, Thomas L. Friedman, “Don’t Try This at Home”, in New York Times‎:

     Meanwhile, the West Bank Palestinian leaders are busy publicly collecting food and blankets to help all those Palestinian civilians brutalized by the Israeli incursion into Gaza, while privately demanding to know from senior Israeli officials why they wimped out and didn’t wipe Hamas in Gaza off the face of earth — casualties be damned.

   • 2009 March 1, Dave Itzkoff, “Offering Terror of an Everyday Variety”, in New York Times‎:

     I could have taken a big chunk out of the show that day by wimping out.

• (behave like a wimp): chicken out

• wimpy