unhero

English

Etymology

From un- +‎ hero.

Noun

unhero (plural unheroes)

1. One who is not a hero; a nonhero.
   • 1978, Partisan Review, volume 45, page 505:

     On one level of meaning this unhero is clearly a political statement, a protest of the military and governmental authority. But he is not that alone; he is also a statement against all masculine assertion as this has been traditionally understood. The unhero nevertheless has his unheroine mate.

   • 1991, Artforum International, volume 29, page 95:

     Comic unheroes are brilliant in practice, tragic heroes only in theory, and their theory lets them down, especially in its conception of their own importance. The comic unheroes know that nobody is important to the world, which is why they won't die for it, and why they play the nobody, getting out of harm's way.

   • 1998, Biblion: The Bulletin of the New York Public Library:

     The trials of living with an "unhero" are many.

   • 2018, They’re Called the “Throwaways”, page 34:

     C, in “One of the Best (Because I Worked so Hard on This)” engages readers in understanding relationships among comic book “unheroes” and how often “unheroes” relate to children “caught up in the system.”

2. A hero who does not fit the archetype of a hero; an antihero.
   • 1963, Foreign Press Digest: Soviet Union, page 44:

     Everyone in the story is absolutely outside time, everything in it is terribly old-fashioned and affected, the "hero" with all of his experiences is infinitely shallow, pompous, and low-standard. He is in principle an "unhero" and everything in the story is in principle deheroized.

   • 1976, Gary Lane, I Am: A Study of E. E. Cummings' Poems, page 79:

     Not only dead, this poem's contemptible unhero is deadening as well.

   • 2015, Thomas A Timberg, The Marwaris: From Jagat Seth to the Birlas:

     Hence, Dalmia comes out sounding like a gambler at heart, not unlike the famous Yudhishthira, the 'unhero' of the Mahabharata.

Coordinate terms

• unheroine