@ossobuco,
The word you wanted was pusillanimous. I learned that word in my first semester at university. Several of us came back from a drunken evening and thought, in our drunktitude, that it would be hilarious to turn all of the furniture upside down in the lounge on our floor of the dormitory. When the cleaning women came in the next morning, they were not amused. The resident assitant went around banging on doors, and we all got up and righted the furniture, apologized to the cleaning women, and went back to bed.
However, apparently, one of them complained to the dormitory manager before that happened. He decided to be a little Nazi, and demanded to know who the culprits were. Nobody was talking. The following Monday, everyone was treated to a screed of his, a copy of which was placed in every mailbos. He spoke of "pusillanimous malcontents." We weren't malcontented. If anything, the problem was that we were overly contented after our night of debauchery.