puerile
Pronunciation
  • (RP) IPA: /ˈpjʊə.ɹaɪl/
  • (America) IPA: /ˈpjʊɹɪl/, /ˈpjʊɹaɪl/
Adjective

puerile

  1. Childish; trifling; silly.
    Synonyms: juvenile, silly, trifling, Thesaurus:childish, Thesaurus:insignificant
    • De Quincey:
      The French have been notorious through generations for their puerile affectation of Roman forms, models, and historic precedents.
    • 1927, Thornton Wilder, The Bridge of San Luis Rey, page 79:
      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.
    • 1930 July, West Kirby, Last and First Men by Olaf Stapledon, Preface (page 9 of the Dover 1968 reprint of L&FM and Star Maker):
      Today we should welcome, and even study, every serious attempt to envisage the future of our race, not merely to grasp the very diverse and often tragic possibilities that confront us, but also that we may familiarize ourselves with the certainty that many of our cherished ideals would seem puerile to more developed minds.
  2. Characteristic of, or pertaining to, a boy or boys; compare puellile.
Translations
  • Russian: мальчи́шеский
  • Spanish: pueril
Translations


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