puerile

Definition

Childish; trifling; silly.

Etymology

From Latin puerīlis (“childish”), from puer (“child, boy”).

Example Sentences

• "1850, Thomas De Quincey, French and English Manners (originally published in Hogg's Instructor The French have been notorious through generations for their puerile affectation of Roman forms, models, and historic precedents."
• "From the table he had received the gout; from the alcove a tendency to convulsions; from the grandeeship a pride so vast and puerile that he seldom heard anything that was said to him and talked to the ceiling in a perpetual monologue; from the exile, oceans of boredom, a boredom so persuasive that it was like pain,—he woke up with it and spent the day with it, and it sat by his bed all night watching his sleep."
• "But can there be anything more puerile, more short-sighted, than the views of those Economists who believe in all earnest that this woeful transitory state means nothing but adapting society to the acquisitive propensities of capitalists, both landlords and money-lords?"

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