puerile
/ˈpjʊərʌɪl
/adjective
Childishly silly and immature: a puerile argument...
- No puerile, childish criticisms will diminish their importance, nor minimise their influence on our national psyche.
- This whole project sounds like the most puerile, childish and willfully obnoxious cinematic venture in years.
- When we see our politicians acting in such a puerile and childish manner is it any wonder the country is awash with apathy and cynicism?
Derivatives
puerilely
- He called Barth's Giles Goat-Boy ‘all but unreadable… and like much of our ‘new fiction’ puerilely obscene.’
- If you find the idea that mothers shape their children's ‘whole’ lives original rather than simultaneously banal and puerilely overstated, then Barnes & Noble, here you come!
puerility
- This ‘tit-for-tat’ mentality that permeates the highest levels of the society not only exposes the puerility of our politicians, but it undermines the spirit of the Constitution.
- Yet most are uniform not only in their puerility of perspective but in their stale language and ideas (not to mention the distance they keep from any hint of meter or rhyme).
- The sheer puerility of the stuff is precisely a combination of banality with evil: a preference for dictatorship larded with obscenity and fatuity.
Origin
Late 16th century (in the sense 'like a boy'): from French puéril or Latin puerilis, from puer 'boy'.
‘Like a boy’ was the early meaning. It comes from French puéril or Latin puerilis, from puer ‘boy’. The sense ‘childish behaviour’ arose in the late 17th century.