Puerile may call to mind qualities of youth and immaturity, but the term itself is no spring chicken. On the contrary, it's been around for more than three centuries, and its predecessors in French and Latin, the adjectives puéril and puerilis, respectively, are far older. Those two terms have the same basic meaning as the English word puerile, and they both trace to the Latin noun puer, meaning "boy" or "child." Nowadays, puerile can describe the acts or utterances of an actual child, but it more often refers (usually with marked disapproval) to occurrences of childishness where adult maturity would be expected or preferred.
told the teenagers that such puerile behavior would not be tolerated during the ceremony
allowed the company to be taken over by a bunch of puerile whippersnappers fresh out of business school
Recent Examples on the WebThe inexplicable twists are interspersed with puerile action scenes.—Kyle Chayka, The New Yorker, 13 Feb. 2024 Hoping to usurp him from the throne, Kuzco's advisor, Yzma (Eartha Kitt), cooks up a plot to poison the puerile figurehead.—Devin Nealy, EW.com, 16 Oct. 2023 As legal weed proliferates across the country, many storefronts have adopted a sterile, corporate aesthetic, while others lean into puerile graphics of, say, red-eyed Rick and Morty smoking blunts.—Ezra Marcus, New York Times, 30 Jan. 2024 Pop music, pointless and puerile, was beneath his contempt.—Joel Selvin, Smithsonian Magazine, 7 Nov. 2023 Dan Harmon’s brand of comedy — sometimes puerile, sometimes erudite, usually with both sensibilities engaged in a graphic on-screen wrestling match — isn’t for everybody.—Daniel Fienberg, The Hollywood Reporter, 24 Sep. 2023 And with that puerile quarrel between stubborn warlords over the right to own and to rape a girl, Western literature begins.—Judith Thurman, The New Yorker, 11 Sep. 2023 Going way beyond the puerile, unfunny, anti-male, anti-maternal playtime that poisons Barbie, Rivette and his French actresses (perhaps influenced by Simone de Beauvoir’s intimacy with Jean-Paul Sartre) understood the complexity of desire felt by women as idealistic individuals.—Armond White, National Review, 26 July 2023 All some people want during the dog days of summer is to sit agog before a mile-high screen, hypnotized by pyrotechnic special effects, puerile jokes, and perhaps the warm comfort of an aging movie star.—Lisa Wong MacAbasco, Vogue, 14 July 2023
These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'puerile.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
Word History
Etymology
French or Latin; French puéril, from Latin puerilis, from puer boy, child; akin to Sanskrit putra son, child and perhaps to Greek pais boy, child — more at few
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