Citations:puerile

English citations of puerile

characteristic of a boy or boys

• 1785, Vicesimus Knox, Liberal Education: Or, a Practical Treatise on the Methods of Acquiring Useful and Polite Learning, §XXXI: on the regulation of puerile diverſions, pp1 & 1–2 & 3

  Many fanciful methods have been invented by those who wished to render puerile sports conducive to improvement. I never found that they were successful.

  I must own myself an advocate for puerile liberty*, during the allotted hours of relaxation. Boys have much restraint and confinement in the time of study.

  Those of the effeminate kind super induce effeminacy; weakness of mind, no less than imbecility of body. Something similar happens in puerile diversions. The boy who has been kept in leading-strings too long, and restrained from hardy sports by the soundness of his mother, will scarcely ever become a man; or possess that becoming spirit which can enable him to act his part with propriety.

• 1931, Gaston Delayen, Cicero, p17

  In 664 Cicero, who had just completed his sixteenth year, exchanged the puerile for the manly gown. At that age the child passed from boyhood to adolescence, which lasted till the thirteenth year; after which came youth, continuing to forty-five, followed by maturity…

• 1934, Marjorie Coryn, The Black Prince, 1330–1376, p1

  Many a father takes his small son to circus or show, and many a father gives audible and delighted signs of his pleasure in the puerile spectacle, while his offspring sits in dignified silence beside him, too overawed by the splendour of the occasion to offer other than mute and grave-eyed homage to it.

• 1934, John Clarke Stobart, The Divine Spark, p171

  Did you ever hear the word “puerile”? Puer is a boy. What sort of boy was Albert if he did not love letters? Idle. Yes. Now write this down: “Albert, an idle boy, did not love letters”.

• 1948, Therese Benedek, Insight and Personality Adjustment: a study of the psychological effects of war, p253

  In the initial phases, during prepuberty, the girl, although she already desires attention, has a relationship with the boy purely on the basis of competition, on the level of puerile identification.

• 1993, Eva C. Keuls, The Reign of the Phallus: sexual politics in ancient Athens, p277

  In some cases the youth is shown with what may be termed a “puerile erection”; evidently the vase painters wanted to show that the passive partner does derive some pleasure from the contact, even without active participation.

• 2002, Nino A. Sylmar, The Boy from Corregidor: A True Story, p214

  For what seemed like an eternity, Sib watched the perfectly sculpted puerile form, completely unadorned except for the coquettish smile on his pouty lips…

• 2004, Colin Feltham, Problems Are Us: Or Is It Just Me?, p114

  The point is — we are all complex and we are all (in my ever so humble, ex-boy, puerile opinion) ‘fucked up’, boys and girls, men and women…