puéril

Forms

puéril (feminine puérile, masculine plural puérils, feminine plural puériles)^[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin puerīlis (“of childhood, thoughtless”), from puer (“child”).^[2][3][4][5] Rey places the Latin noun in a family of familiar, expressive words for a young animal or child, which also includes pullus (the source of poule) and pusillanimis.^[3] In Latin it was ousted by infāns, whose sense widened to cover it.^[3]

Cognate with Italian puerile, Spanish pueril and Provençal pueril.^[6]

Earliest recorded meaning

Its first record is the feminine plural noun pueriles “rudiments” in Georges Chastellain (1461);^[2] Rey dates this noun use to about 1360.^[3] As an adjective it is found in 1476 in Jean Robertet, meaning “fit only for a child, unworthy of a grown-up”.^[2]

Semantic evolution

The adjective first had both senses of the Latin word, “belonging to childhood” and “childish”, as Bloch and Wartburg note.^[4] The neutral sense “of or proper to a child” is recorded from the early 16th century^[2][3] and survived above all in the title Civilité puérile et honnête, a manual of good manners for children (1690).^[3][7] Displaced in that use by enfantin, the word came to mean chiefly “childish, frivolous”, said disparagingly of adults, where it competes with infantile.^[3]

Medicine used respiration puérile for breathing heard louder than normal in auscultation.^[6][2] The derivatives puériliser (1801) and puérilisme (1887, later a psychopathological term for an adult's morbid return to a child's mentality) were formed in French.^[3]

Timeline

• 1461 – Georges Chastellain uses pueriles “rudiments”.^[2]
• 1476 – First adjectival use, “unworthy of an adult”, in Jean Robertet.^[2]
• 1501 – The adverb puérilement is first recorded.^[2][3]
• 1512 – Jean Lemaire de Belges uses it in the sense “of childhood”.^[8]
• 1690 – Civilité puérile et honnête is recorded.^[3]
• 1801 – The verb puériliser appears.^[3]
• 1887 – Puérilisme is first recorded.^[3]

Meanings

Adjective

1. (dated, literary) Of or belonging to childhood: l’âge puéril.^[7][6][2]
2. Childish, immature, not worthy of an adult: une colère puérile.^[7][2]
3. (medicine) Respiration puérile: breathing heard louder than normal on auscultation.^[2][6]

Word family

• puérilement
• puériliser
• puérilisme

Related words

• puériculteur
• puériculture
• Latin puer

Usage notes

Civilité puérile et honnête was the title of an old manual of manners for children;^[6][7] Littré records the joke that someone has not read the Civilité puérile for a person who lacks manners.^[6][7]

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Trésor de la langue française informatisé (2004), ATILF – CNRS & Université de Lorraine, atilf.fr/tlfi; electronic version of Imbs, Paul; Quemada, Bernard, eds. (1971–1994), Trésor de la langue française, Paris: CNRS / Gallimard
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert
4. ^ a b Bloch, Oscar; Wartburg, Walther von (1989), Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue française, 8th ed., Paris: Presses universitaires de France
5. ^ Wartburg, Walther von, et al. (1922–2002), Französisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch, 25 vols., Bonn / Leipzig / Basel: Klopp / Teubner / Zbinden, p. 9, 509a
6. ^ a b c d e f Littré, Émile (1873–1877), Dictionnaire de la langue française, 4 vols. and supplement, Paris: Hachette
7. ^ a b c d e Rey-Debove, Josette; Rey, Alain, eds. (2007), Le Petit Robert de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert
8. ^ Guilbert, Louis; Lagane, René; Niobey, Georges, eds. (1971–1978; 1989), Grand Larousse de la langue française, Paris: Larousse