Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The state or quality of being childlike; simplicity; artlessness.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun The state or quality of being childlike.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

childlike +‎ -ness

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Examples

  • There is a childhood into which we have to grow, just as there is a childhood which we must leave behind; a childlikeness which is the highest gain of humanity, and a childishness from which but few of those who are counted the wisest among men, have freed themselves in their imagined progress towards the reality of things.

    David Elginbrod George MacDonald 1864

  • Yet, in her mouth, English was a new and beautiful language, softly limpid, with an audacity of phrase and tellingness of expression that conveyed subtleties and nuances as unambiguous and direct as they were unexpected from one of such childlikeness and simplicity.

    BY THE TURTLES OF TASMAN 2010

  • But one cannot read Public Enemies, this lively, bracing, vibrant correspondence, without remarking the ferocious joy, the playfulness, the nose-thumbing, the childlikeness that characterize it.

    Marie-Laure Delorme: Provocation and Silence in Public Enemies Marie-Laure Delorme 2011

  • One cannot read Public Enemies, this lively, bracing, vibrant correspondence, without remarking the ferocious joy, the playfulness, the nose-thumbing, the childlikeness that characterize it.

    Marie-Laure Delorme: Provocation and Silence in Public Enemies Marie-Laure Delorme 2011

  • This reminds us of another aspect of childlikeness, the aspect of trust, which is often difficult in the face of life's troubles and in the face of a holy God who can be quite frightening himself.

    Movie Review: Transformers 2007

  • A few people around me laughed and one woman leaned over to me and said, "Don't lose your childlikeness."

    Archive 2007-02-01 2007

  • A few people around me laughed and one woman leaned over to me and said, "Don't lose your childlikeness."

    Wyoming Youth Retreat 2007 2007

  • Great Regulars: But preserving the childlikeness, the great problem

    Archive 2009-04-01 Rus Bowden 2009

  • And that brings us back to that command about childlikeness.

    Movie Review: Transformers 2007

  • Yet childlikeness can evanesce like so much dry ice.

    The Puzzle Of Genius 2008

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