Perhaps accents are affecting people’s impressions of pronunciation here, but to me the difference between the two is better written as ‘cow’ and ‘cow-werd’ - ‘cow’ leaves off with an open sound, but you have to move your lips more deliberately to pronounce the ‘werd’ part of ‘coward’.
Anelie
GreatKingRat, I have seen it in a Webster’s dictionary. It is the Welsh spelling for dog although in the definition it said it was archaic, if I recall correctly. I don’t know what your dictionary has or not. I wouldn’t use it in Scrabble unless I had an English dictionary to back it up. (I hate Scrabble anyway, so it doesn’t matter.)
HUGS!
Sqrl