This kid is really spineless - he chokes at the critical moment.
Tips
memory
Look at the character: 不 (not) stacked on top of 好 (good) - literally "not good." One of the few Chinese characters whose meaning you can read straight off its components. Mostly heard in northern dialects (esp. Shandong/Henan).
register
Colloquial / dialectal, mildly insulting. The compound 孬种 (coward) is the most common form you’ll hear, especially in films and northern speech.
Top 不 - negation, 'not.' Stacks negation right on top of 好 below. One of the most transparent ideographic builds in Chinese: 不 plus 好 vertically gives 'not good, bad, cowardly.' A folk coinage from northern dialects, common in Henan and Shandong speech. Indexed under Kangxi #39 子, taken from the child inside 好.
Bottom 好 - woman holding a child, the canonical character for 'good.' Negated by 不 on top, the whole character reads literally as 'not good.' 孬 is used colloquially for poor-quality, lousy, cowardly: 孬种 (a coward), 孬人 (a wretch). The compositional logic is unmistakable and easy to remember.
Filed under radical 子 (zǐ, #39) by convention. 子 is not a separate component in 孬, so no strokes are highlighted.
