Childish

How to spell childish

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce childish

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does childish mean?

1. adjectiveBehaving in a silly or immature way that is inappropriate for an adult.

Childish in a sentence

• His childish refusal to apologise dragged the meeting on for an hour.

• Sulking over a parking space struck everyone as rather childish.

Where does childish come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word is rooted in the native Old English noun cild, meaning a young human being, combined with the very old adjective-forming suffix -isc, which conveyed the idea of belonging to or having the character of something. The compound cildisc was already in use well over a thousand years ago to mean 'of or like a child', so this is genuinely home-grown English rather than a later borrowing. Over the centuries the -isc ending softened in spelling and sound to the modern -ish we still attach to many words, as in 'foolish' and 'boyish'. Interestingly, the word carried a neutral or even tender sense in early use, but by the later medieval period it had picked up the disapproving flavour of 'immature' or 'silly' that dominates today. The same cild also gives us 'child' and 'children', and remembering that connection keeps the spelling tidy: it is simply child with -ish added, no letters dropped.

How the word is built

• child (Old English cild: a young person)
• -ish (adjective suffix meaning 'having the nature of')