recreant

1. (now rare, poetic) Having admitted defeat and surrendered; defeated.Examples: "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."archaicpoetic

2. (now poetic, literary) Unfaithful to someone, or to one's duties or honour; disloyal, false.Examples: "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."literarypoetic