childish - Wiktionary, the free dictionary (original) (raw)

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary

From Middle English childisch, from Old English ċildisċ. By surface analysis, child +‎ -ish.

childish (comparative more childish, superlative most childish)

  1. Immature in thought or behaviour.
    Your childish temper tantrums are not going to change my decision on this matter.
  2. Suitable for or expected of a child.
    This game is very childish.
    • 1824, Susan Ferrier, The Inheritance, page 130:
      She remembered, too, when, after a long childish illness, her father had carried her in his arms to the garden, […]
    • 1849 May – 1850 November, Charles Dickens, The Personal History of David Copperfield, London: Bradbury & Evans, […], published 1850, →OCLC:
      As I walked to and fro daily between Southwark and Blackfriars, and lounged about at meal-times in obscure streets, the stones of which may, for anything I know, be worn at this moment by my childish feet, I wonder how many of these people were wanting in the crowd that used to come filing before me in review again, to the echo of Captain Hopkins’s voice!

Typically, the word is not used to describe children, as childish behavior is expected of them. Instead, it applies to older people perceived as acting in an immature or childlike manner.

behaving immaturely

belonging to or suitable for a child