puerile

Etymology

It is borrowed from Middle French pueril, now French puéril, and directly borrowed from Latin puerīlis (“of a boy or child, childish”),^[2][3][4][5] from puer (“boy, child”) and the suffix -īlis.^[2][6][5] Barnhart, dating the word to 1661, and Etymonline, dating it to the 1660s, explained it as a back-formation from puerility, influenced by or partly from French,^[7][8] but the revised OED has it from 1527.^[2] The OED considers the Latin noun perhaps from the same Indo-European base as Ancient Greek παῖς (paîs, “boy, child”).^[2][5] Klein relates it to Latin putus (“boy”) and Oscan puklum (“boy”) and derives it from a base meaning "small, little, young",^[9] which Ayto also gives and the American Heritage Dictionary enters as Proto-Indo-European *pau-.^[10][6]

Earliest recorded meaning

Of or suitable for a boy or child: 1527, in a text printed in the Letters and Papers of the reign of Henry VIII.^[2] Merriam-Webster Unabridged has the same year,^[5] while the Shorter Oxford and the Oxford Dictionary of English put the word in the late 16th century.^[3][11]

Semantic evolution

According to Ayto, Latin puerīlis had begun to take on its negative colouring before English borrowed it.^[10] French had the word for "unsophisticated, silly" from 1476, before "of a child" in the early 16th century.^[2] In English the neutral sense, "boyish, youthful, elementary", came first,^[2][12] and between 1576 and 1659 the plural pueriles meant schoolbooks or exercises for children.^[2] The derogatory use, of talk or thought fit for children rather than adults, is recorded from before 1680, in Glanvill,^[2] and Etymonline and the Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins likewise put it in the late 17th century.^[8][12] Johnson (1755) gave only "childish; boyish", quoting Pope.^[13] In 1821 a translation of Laennec brought in a medical use for loud breathing sounds, normal in children, heard through a stethoscope.^[2] The OED now calls the neutral sense rare.^[2]

Timeline

• 1527 – of or suitable for a boy or child.^[2][5]
• 1576 – plural noun, books or exercises for children (obsolete by 1659).^[2]
• before 1680 – childish, immature, silly.^[2]
• 1821 – of breathing, loud as in children.^[2]

Meanings

Adjective

1. Childish in a way unworthy of an adult; immature, silly or trivial: The committee soon tired of his puerile jokes.^[14][5][2]
2. Of or characteristic of a child; boyish, a sense now rare.^[14][5][2]
3. (medicine) Of breathing: marked by the loud respiratory sounds found in children, in adults usually a sign of disease; now rare.^[2][3]

Word family

• puerilely
• puerility
• puerilism

Related words

• few
• puerperal
• pusillanimous
• pedagogue

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
4. ^ Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
5. ^ a b c d e f g Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
6. ^ a b The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
7. ^ Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
8. ^ a b Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
9. ^ Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
10. ^ a b Ayto, John (2005), Word Origins: The Secret Histories of English Words from A to Z, 2nd ed., London: A & C Black
11. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
12. ^ a b Cresswell, Julia (2021), Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
13. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
14. ^ a b Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins