puerility
(pjuːəˈrɪlɪtɪ)
[a. F. puérilité (15th c. in Hatz.-Darm.), or ad. L. puerīlitās, -tātem, f. puerīlis: see prec.]
1. The condition of being a child; childhood; in Civil Law, the age between seven and fourteen.
| 1512 Helyas in Thoms Prose Rom. (1828) III. 34 Seinge the indigent puerylite of them. 1575 Fenton Gold. Epist. (1577) 259 Puerilitie, being the seconde age, continueth from seuen to fourteene years. 1646 Sir T. Browne Pseud. Ep. i. vii. 24 A Reserve of Puerilitie wee have not shaken off from Schoole. 1849 Ruskin Sev. Lamps v. §3. 139 There would be hope if we could change palsy into puerility. |
2. The quality of being puerile; (mere) childishness, triviality.
| 1576 Fleming Panopl. Epist. 282 Who..playeth pranckes of puerilitie and childishnesse. 1662 Stillingfl. Orig. Sacr. iii. iii. §1 In nothing did Epicurus more discover the weakness and puerility of his judgement. 1712 Addison Spect. No. 523 ¶5 Downright Puerility, and unpardonable in a Poet that is past Sixteen. 1827 Macaulay Ess., Machiavelli (1887) 45 That a shrewd statesman..should, at nearly sixty years of age, descend to such puerility is utterly inconceivable. 1907 Academy 16 Nov. 143/2 The puerility of this attempt is..astonishing. |
b. With a and pl. An instance of childishness in behaviour, work, or speech; a thing that embodies or displays childishness. (In quot. 1779, juvenile productions.)
| c 1450 Mankind 813 in Macro Plays 30 Ewyr to offend, & euer to aske mercy, þat ys a puerilite. 1692 Dryden St. Euremont's Ess. 363 Relaxing sometimes to very great Puerilities. 1712 Addison Spect. No. 279 ¶5 Those trifling Points and Puerilities that are so often to be met with in Ovid. 1779 Johnson L.P., Cowley Wks. II. 7 Of the learned puerilities of Cowley there is no doubt, since a volume of his poems was..printed in his thirteenth year. 1830 Scott Demonol. iii. 116 The genius of Milton alone could discard all these vulgar puerilities. 1853 Kane Grinnell Exp. xxix. (1856) 245 Not a vermilion-daubed puerility, with a glory in Dutch leaf..but a good, genuine, hearty representative of English flesh and blood. |