Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Of or pertaining to a boy or child; boyish; childish; juvenile.
- Hence Merely childish; lacking intellectual force; trivial: as, a puerile criticism.
- Synonyms Juvenile, Boyish, etc. (see youthful).
- Weak, foolish, silly.
Wiktionary
- adj. Characteristic of, or pertaining to, a boy or boys; confer: puellile.
- adj. Childish; trifling; silly.
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. Boyish; childish; trifling; silly.
WordNet 3.0
- adj. of or characteristic of a child
- adj. displaying or suggesting a lack of maturity
Etymologies
- From Latin puerīlis ("childish"), from puer ("child, boy"). (Wiktionary)
- Latin puerīlis, from puer, child, boy; see pau-1 in Indo-European roots. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“Maitland in his _Account of the Early Printed Books at Lambeth_, 1843, already takes occasion to animadvert on what he terms the puerile competition for rarities, which had then set in.”
“Your example of email being maligned as puerile is just a case in point.”
“I view Goodling's use of the word as an attempt to deny responsibility for her actions by seeing herself in puerile terms.”
“How puerile is it to condemn someone for not being the way you want her to be?”
“Exercises in puerile junk! on 30 Apr 2007 at 11: 51 am Therese Walsh”
Writer Unboxed » Blog Archive » 5 Surefire Ways to a Trashed Query
“She wasted no time in puerile apprehensions – it was not her nature; she had the rare feminine virtue of never "fidgeting" – at least externally.”
“I couldn’t resist the pun; some of us think puerile is funny.”
“A "puerile" Foreign Office memo which has thrown the Pope's state visit to Britain into doubt was circulated by a 23-year-old Oxford graduate who once included "drinking a lot" among his hobbies.”
The Huffington Post: Pope Memo Sent By 23-Year-Old Oxford Graduate
“(That is why its not 'puerile' to call Barry a Marxist: its the plain truth).”
“Is there any way I can object to Wittman's argument without being instantly labeled "puerile"?”
Greg Sargent: Anti-War Liberals Are Acting in the Interests of Party and Country
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘puerile’.
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501
Classic
aberration, abstruse, anomaly, assiduous, august, banal, boisterous, dulcet, epitome, impudent, insolent, mellifluous and 401 more...
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Interesting words
A list of words that are odd or words that I have looked up.
concupiscence, brize, scree, scoria, forestaff, spanaemia, valetudinarianism, distasture, pyrethrum, laudanum, gentian, bicameral and 11184 more...
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words 1
Traduce, Ramify, precipitous, rapture, adumbrate, knell, smolder, vagary, choleric, sibylline, hypocritical, jejune and 135 more...
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501
Classic
aberration, abstruse, anomaly, assiduous, august, banal, boisterous, dulcet, epitome, impudent, insolent, mellifluous and 401 more...
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GRE 2014
abate, abdicate, abase, aberrant, abeyance, abhor, abjure, abortive, abound, abrasive, abreast, abridge and 1577 more...
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From reading
Collected from reading
venerate, reprobate, reticent, adoration, ethereal, ephemeral, equivocal, contumacious, heinous, solicitous, agnostic, aberration and 335 more...
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Jesse's random
bathos, dragoman, tessellated, escutcheon, eikon, mondaine, basilisk, ciborium, rubric, machicolation, jet, defalcation and 198 more...
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501
Classic
aberration, abstruse, anomaly, assiduous, august, banal, boisterous, dulcet, epitome, impudent, insolent, mellifluous and 401 more...
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Naresh_Gre2
convoke, cosset, coterie, declaim, distaff, doff, dovetail, droll, dyspeptic, egress, ersatz, euphemism and 108 more...
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501
Classic
bane, bilk, boor, elan, ado, toil, onus, aberration, abstruse, anomaly, assiduous, august and 401 more...
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Philosophic , etymology
every major discipline has uniquely developed esoteric nomenclature to facilitate interdisciplinary dissemination
quale , qualia, elegy, tacet, lexicon, annunciate, caste, eros, contrive, purlicue, irony, venacular, dilapidate and 567 more...
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Cool Words
Words I'd like to see enter common usage.
fricatrice, inchoate, imparlance, apothegm, ductile, parley, frisson, quiescent, redolent, insouciance, feckless, caviling and 25 more...
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Lolita
Marat, diaphanous, stolid, inveigle, moll, domicile, pugilist, indigent, corpulent, erudite, coruscate, ameliorate and 16 more...
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man gre
abase, abeyance, abreast, abscission, abscond, abyss, accede, accretion, acerbic, acidulous, acumen, adulterate and 483 more...
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February 2012
filiopietistic, bifurcate, enclave, wedlock, decadent, unduly, defunct, lapel, tumescent, capitulation, leaden, scintilla and 83 more...
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GRE
GRE words from Princeton Review guide, ETS GRE Book from 2010 (for revised test), New Yorker/NY Times articles.
sycophant, obsequious, volubility, equanimity, enervate, effrontery, impertinent, platitude, impudence, quiescent, propitiate, equivocate and 124 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for puerile.
super-logos Puer is the Latin word for boy. Aug 7, 2008