A.Word.A.Day--puerile

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The Magic of Words

Aug 3, 2010

This week's theme
Words for insults

This week's words
troglodyte
puerile

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A.Word.A.Day

with Anu Garg

puerile

PRONUNCIATION:

(PYOO-uhr-il, -uh-ryl, PYOOR-il, -yl)

MEANING:

adjective:
1. Immature; silly; childish.
2. Relating to childhood.

ETYMOLOGY:

From Latin puer (boy). Ultimately from the Indo-European root pau- (few, little), which is also the source of paucity, few, foal, filly, pony, pullet, poultry, pupa, poor, pauper, poco, and Sanskrit putra (son).

USAGE:

"An Australian friend recently jolted me with an apparently aesthetic but obviously puerile suggestion, 'Mate, can we amend this burqa ban so that only ugly women are required to wear them while the good-looking ones are mandated to wear bikinis?' He was referring to the boiling controversy in Europe over the body-covering burqa."
Chan Akya; Burqa Over the Bastille; Asia Times (Hong Kong); Jul 24, 2010.

Explore "puerile" in the Visual Thesaurus.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:

In youth we feel richer for every new illusion; in maturer years, for every one we lose. -Madame Anne Sophie Swetchine, mystic (1782-1857)

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