different between puerile vs unfledged

English

Etymology

From Latin puer?lis (“childish”), from puer (“child, boy”).

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /?pj??.?a?l/
• (US) IPA^(key): /?pj???l/, /?pj??a?l/

Adjective

puerile (comparative more puerile, superlative most puerile)

1. Childish; trifling; silly.

   Synonyms: juvenile, silly, trifling; see also Thesaurus:childish, Thesaurus:insignificant

   • 1850, Thomas De Quincey, French and English Manners (originally published in Hogg's Instructor

     The French have been notorious through generations for their puerile affectation of Roman forms, models, and historic precedents.

   • 1927, Thornton Wilder, The Bridge of San Luis Rey, page 79:

     From the table he had received the gout; from the alcove a tendency to convulsions; from the grandeeship a pride so vast and puerile that he seldom heard anything that was said to him and talked to the ceiling in a perpetual monologue; from the exile, oceans of boredom, a boredom so persuasive that it was like pain,—he woke up with it and spent the day with it, and it sat by his bed all night watching his sleep.

   • 1930 July, West Kirby, Last and First Men by Olaf Stapledon, Preface (page 9 of the Dover 1968 reprint of L&FM and Star Maker):

     Today we should welcome, and even study, every serious attempt to envisage the future of our race, not merely to grasp the very diverse and often tragic possibilities that confront us, but also that we may familiarize ourselves with the certainty that many of our cherished ideals would seem puerile to more developed minds.

2. Characteristic of, or pertaining to, a boy or boys; compare puellile. (Can we add an example for this sense?)

Derived terms

• puerilism
• puerility

Translations

See also

• boyish
• yobbish
• youthful

Anagrams

• pie rule

German

Pronunciation

Adjective

puerile

1. inflection of pueril:
   1. strong/mixed nominative/accusative feminine singular
   2. strong nominative/accusative plural
   3. weak nominative all-gender singular
   4. weak accusative feminine/neuter singular

Italian

Etymology

From Latin puer?lis.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /pwe?ri.le/

Adjective

puerile (plural puerili)

1. puerile, childish, juvenile, boyish
2. (rare, relational) children's, baby

Synonyms

• infantile

Related terms

Anagrams

• pelurie

Latin

Pronunciation

• (Classical) IPA^(key): /pu.e?ri?.le/, [pu???i????]
• (Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): /pu.e?ri.le/, [pu???i?l?]

Adjective

puer?le

1. nominative neuter singular of puer?lis
2. accusative neuter singular of puer?lis
3. vocative neuter singular of puer?lis

References

• puerile in Charles du Fresne du Cange’s Glossarium Mediæ et Infimæ Latinitatis (augmented edition, 1883–1887)

English

Etymology

un- +? fledged

Adjective

unfledged (not comparable)

1. Not having feathers; (of a bird) not yet having developed its wings and feathers and become able to fly.

   Synonym: callow

   Antonym: fledged

   • c. 1609, William Shakespeare, Cymbeline, Act III, Scene 3^[1]

     […] we, poor unfledged,

     Have never wing’d from view o’ the nest, nor know not

     What air’s from home.

   • 1818, Jane Austen, Persuasion, Chapter 21,^[2]

     “The little Durands were there, I conclude,” said she, “with their mouths open to catch the music, like unfledged sparrows ready to be fed. They never miss a concert.”

   • 1854, Henry David Thoreau, Walden, “The Bean-Field,”^[3]

     The hawk is aerial brother of the wave which he sails over and surveys, those his perfect air-inflated wings answering to the elemental unfledged pinions of the sea.

   • 1869, Louisa May Alcott, Little Women, Part 2, Chapter 28,^[4]

     “Boy and girl. Aren’t they beauties?” said the proud papa, beaming upon the little red squirmers as if they were unfledged angels.

2. (figuratively) Not yet fully grown or developed; not yet mature.
   • c. 1610, William Shakespeare, The Winter’s Tale, Act I, Scene 2,^[5]

     Temptations have since then been born to’s; for

     In those unfledged days was my wife a girl;

     Your precious self had then not cross’d the eyes

     Of my young play-fellow.

   • 1792, Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, Section 5.5,^[6]

     Besides, it is not possible to give a young person a just view of life; he must have struggled with his own passions before he can estimate the force of the temptation which betrayed his brother into vice. Those who are entering life, and those who are departing, see the world from such very different points of view, that they can seldom think alike, unless the unfledged reason of the former never attempted a solitary flight.

   • 1848, James Russell Lowell, “Si Descendero in Infernum, Ades” in Poems. Second Series, Cambridge: G. Nichols, p. 38,^[7]

     Yet they who watch your God-compelled return

     May see your happy perihelion burn

     Where the calm sun his unfledged planets broods.

   • 1946, Olaf Stapledon, Death into Life, Chapter 4,^[8]

     Fantasy, sheer fantasy? Perhaps! But when we think of time and of eternity, intelligence reels. The shrewdest questions that we can ask about them are perhaps falsely shaped, being but flutterings of the still unfledged human mentality.

3. (figuratively) Inexperienced, like a tyro or novice.

   Antonym: experienced

   • 1898, Gertrude Atherton, The Californians, Book I, Chapter 23,^[9]

     He had long since determined that Magdaléna should marry no one of the sons of his moneyed friends, nor yet any of the sprouting lawyers or unfledged business youths who made up the masculine half of the younger fashionable set.

   • 1915, Lucy Maud Montgomery, Anne of the Island, Chapter 37,^[10]

     Aunt Jamesina had a proper respect for the cloth even in the case of an unfledged parson.