Undead

The undead are beings in mythology, legend, or fiction that are deceased but behave as if alive. A common example of an undead being is a corpse re-animated by supernatural forces, by the application of the deceased's own life force, or that of another being (such as a demon). The undead may be incorporeal like ghosts, or corporeal like vampires and zombies. The undead are featured in the belief systems of most cultures, and appear in many works of fantasy and horror fiction.

Bram Stoker considered using the title The Un-Dead for his novel Dracula (1897), and use of the term in the novel is mostly responsible for the modern sense of the word. The word does appear in English before Stoker but with the more literal sense of "alive" or "not dead", for which citations can be found in the Oxford English Dictionary. Stoker's use of the term refers only to vampires, and the extension to other types of supernatural beings arose later. Most commonly, it is now taken to refer to supernatural beings which had at one time been alive and continue to display some aspects of life after death, but the usage is highly variable.

Undead (Warhammer)

The Undead of the Warhammer Fantasy Tabletop Wargame (Games Workshop ltd.), were introduced to the game in its very earliest editions. The term itself can refer either to the undivided and all-inclusive army—ranging from ghosts and vampires to skeletons and mummies—or to the separate components which make up the two: The Tomb Kings of Khemri, and the Vampire Counts. Up to and including the fifth edition of Warhammer Fantasy Battle, the Undead represented the combined forces. For the sixth edition, Games Workshop divided the Undead into two separate armies to represent the chaos which Nagash created when he cast his Spell of Awakening to begin his assault on the lands of the living.

As in-game legend goes, Nagash was a priest in the courts of the land of Nehekara, and after learning Dark Magic from prisoner Dark Elves, developed his own twisted form of Magic which he termed Necromancy. This magic gave him the power to command the dead, and ultimately he cast a powerful spell from his tower, with the intent of raising all the dead of Nehekhara, thus creating a titanic army of mindless Undead. The recent dead joined with the enslaved Tomb Kings of ancient Khemri to begin their march to Nagash's tower. They would not complete their journey, for Nagash was slain through the machinations of the Skaven and their pawn, the escaped captive King Alcadizaar. The ratmen, who had grown jealous of Nagash's hoard of Warpstone, gave to Alcadizaar a sword which could cut down the mighty sorcerer: The Fellblade. While the act did not destroy Nagash, it banished him from the material world for more than 10 centuries, collapsing most of Undead horde that his sorcery had raised, and leaving the Vampires to pursue their own ends as his unwitting progeny. With Nagash's death, the Tomb Kings retained their unlife, but had regained their individual will.

Undead (disambiguation)

Undead is a collective name for supernatural entities that are deceased yet behave as if alive.

Undead or The Undead may also refer to:

Fiction

Music

Other media

Cowardice

Cowardice is a trait wherein fear and excess self-concern override doing or saying what is right, good and of help to others or oneself in a time of need—it is the opposite of courage. As a label, "cowardice" indicates a failure of character in the face of a challenge.

Many military codes of justice proscribe cowardice in combat as a crime punishable by death (note the phrase "shot at dawn").

As a retraction of a virtue that many cultures may expect or have expected, cowardice rates as a character flaw which society or its representatives may variously stigmatize or punish.

Etymology

According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, the word coward came into English from the Old French word coart (modern French couard), a combination of the word for "tail" (Modern French queue, Latin cauda) and an agent noun suffix. It would therefore have meant "one with a tail" — perhaps from the habit of animals displaying their tails in flight ("turning tail"), or from a dog's habit of putting its tail between its legs when it is afraid or cowed. Like many other English words of French origin, this word was introduced in the English language by the French-speaking Normans, after the Norman conquest of England in 1066.

Coward (surname)

Coward is a surname. Notable people with the surname include:

See also

Coward (disambiguation)

A coward is someone who possesses the trait of cowardice.

Coward may also refer to:

People

Arts and entertainment