I was recently reviewing the meaning of the word "craven," which included trying to find some good examples of its usage. More often than not, I came across the phrases, "craven desires" and "craven idols," neither of which seem to be using the definitions I find for "craven." I am assuming that the word "craven" in these instances is acting more like a participle of some sort for the verb "to crave," but, thus far, I have not found any dictionary entry that alludes to this. For phrases so common as "craven desires" and "craven idols" why do I not see some mention made of this?
Addendum:
Well, there's at least one decent answer in this thread that I will award the green checkmark to if no others surface, so I don't know how necessary this is at this point. However, since I felt my initial question was sufficient and sense that others will, too, I will elaborate a bit to explain why I am adding to my original question. First of all, I am really quite shocked that so many have never heard of the phrase "craven idol(s)" before. (See comments below.) I will wholeheartedly admit that I was unaware that it was a rock band and I did have to do some major revisions to my search parameters to finally get something that wasn't about that band. Nevertheless, in my defense, I had heard or seen the phrase "craven idols" so long ago that I couldn't even tell you when it became part of my memory bank. Not considering myself all that "well read," I was surprised to see that so many in this alleged erudite forum would be so dumbfounded by the phrase "craven idol." But to suffice the skepticism of those below, what follows are some examples of the written word and its use of the phrase "craven idol(s)." [I won't bother adding examples of "craven desires" because someone already took the time and trouble to do so (see the answers below)]. Examples of craven idol and/or craven idols follow:
"Saint Paul makes the law of nature the basis for his claim that God can legitimately punish those who violate its precepts and inclinations. He especially condemns the pagan practice of idol worship — of making God into the image of mortals, birds, and snakes. Saint Paul is not referring to people who find themselves ignorant about the true God. He addresses those whose personal wickedness compels them to reduce God to a craven idol."
Source: Praying with Saint Paul: Daily Reflections on the Letters of Saint Paul
"Garrett, damned to hell as he could well see, knew now, much to his horror, that Vanra's loyalty had been easily purchased. The bodyguard's honour was swayed by gold alone and, alas, Garratt's reliance on the mere honour of the soldiering brotherhood could never topple that craven idol of greed."
Source: Shadows Beneath the Watch Tower
"In some universities, lecturers fearful of sparking a suicide refuse to fail even the poorest students. "I often think of the implications for the student and the family before failing anyone," says one professor at Sogang University. But Korean students and their families, whose faith in the omnipotent powers of education is greater than in any other Confucian country in Asia, are worshipping a craven idol. If anyone takes too close a look at the system, they will be in for a rude awakening."
I see I still haven't added an example of "craven idols" yet, so here's one more. For the record, there were several I could have chosen. I suppose this is as good as any:
"These 'evil men who had been used to milking the villagers for years by parading bronze peacocks and other such craven idols among the villages and thus collecting large sums for their own use' had to be put down."
Source: The Well-protected Domains: Ideology and the Legitimation of Power in the Ottoman Empire, 1876-1909
Best Answer
The Desires
The standard dictionary definition of craven is "cowardly":
Ephialtes betrayed the united Greek forces to the Persians at Thermopylæ in hope of gain, his craven, i.e. cowardly desires. Greed in itself is not always cowardly, but accepting payment for betrayal, as Judas Iscariot, may certainly be deemed so.
In other usages, however, moral failings other than cowardice seem to be on the author's mind: craven desires are base, often debauched, and in the fiery rhetoric of Christian moralists, a grievous sin. For those wanting to perfume their otherwise wanting prose with a whiff of scandal, the word may equally serve.
And now for someone apparently ready to chuck it all for (shudder!) one night of pleasure:
This isn't cowardice; it's sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll. How lexicographers have missed this usage is beyond me, but only Superman-sized conceptual leaps can get to cowardice from charming, seductive negligees.
Craven Desire in the Singular
Craven desires can just as easily be condemned in the singular, where the distance from the original meaning of "cowering, cowardly" is even more apparent. Occasionally, the familiar moral tone of the plural is still heard. Thus paraphrasing the Buddha:
And a Christian writer in an imaginary conversation with Hieronymus Bosch:
This suggests a meaning of inordinate, selfish desire, or, in a word, lust, which can be described negatively in countless scenarios without audible religious overtones. Thus a craven desire
One writer turns to Norman Mailer for a critique of the media in the run-up to the Second Gulf War:
A journalist takes a look at the 1936 Berlin Olympics and
While craven is never completely free of opprobrium, there are cases where the desire is neither overwhelming nor morally suspect, merely very strong. Thus a business has a craven desire to win over consumers or fill a niche market, and the director of the film Benjamin Button has a craven desire to elicit emotion.
One writer suggests that US senators' reluctance to use email comes from their craven desire to avoid record-keeping, while the Far Right in the US has a craven desire for academic acceptance.
Finally, a self-designated perfectionist has a "craven desire to do everything perfectly the first time" and a woman in India describes humorously her craven desire for a Michael Kors handbag.
No stretch of the imagination can inject cowardice into any of these usages of craven.
The Idols
Craven idol received no hits in a Google NGram; a collocation search only yielded results such as fear/fears, unambiguously in the sense of 'cowardly.' Since Craven Idol is also the name of a heavy metal band, googling becomes a frustrating exercise in using the minus sign. What non-metalic results appear, however, suggest that the band is not using a nonce word for its name.
A Time Magazine review (31 Mar 1961) of a decidedly anti-modernist book by Robert Elliot Fitch, Dean of the Pacific School of Religion, is entitled The Craven Idol.
The Golden Calf of the Exodus saga is craven:
Foss also alludes to the statue of the Roman emperor to which Christians were to pay homage or suffer punishment.
In The Invisible Dragon: Essays on Beauty, Revised and Expanded, 2012, author Dave Hickey describes a painting of Jesus, which
A four-item catalogue such as this is the last place one would expect an affect-laden or polemic adjective, though idol is the only noun that gets any adjective at all. Whatever the intentions of the author, pausing in the middle of a list to comment on the "cowardly" nature of a cultic statue is not likely to be among them.
Almost all of these uses of craven, whether collocated with desires or idol, come from literature with an overtly religious stance, or certainly a moral one.
For the prophet Habakkuk (2.18), graven or molten images are made from human hands: they are "dumb," inert stone or metal incapable of speech. In 1 Cor. 12.2, they are merely "dumb idols." It would be difficult to imagine a writer of devotional literature ascribing any affect at all to an idol, even a negative one such as cowardice.
The Dilemma
Craven desires and craven idol seem to inhabit the same Christian moral and polemic universe, yet the usual definition of craven as "cowardly" is a poor fit for either. A meaning of "depraved, debauched" might work for desires, but not for idols. Try as I might, I can only see the use of craven for idols as a strange variant of graven, even by those intimate with the latter term from the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures.
The parallel of bronze peacocks and craven idols in the Ottoman history would suggest an adjective equally parallel to bronze, and none of the sources for craven idol would suffer in the least were graven used in its stead.
The use of the singular diverges just as strongly from dictionary entries, yet it's clear that the word craven is being used in ways other than that prescribed. Perhaps craven suggests to some speakers an excessive craving for most any desired object, which can be acknowledged but not necessarily condemned. The disparity between living language and lexicography for this word, however, remains an intriguing dilemma.