Word.ws English Dictionary

adultify

adultify verb: to treat a non-adult like an adult.

Verb

adultify (third-person singular simple present adultifies, present participle adultifying, simple past and past participle adultified)

  1. To treat a non-adult like an adult.
    • Neil Postman argued for The Disappearance of Childhood in 1982, maintaining that television prematurely adultifies children by confronting them with crime and violence and other adult topics.2014, Anita Wohlmann, Aged Young Adults: Age Readings of Contemporary American Novels and Films
    Antonyms:
    infantilize

Antonyms of adultify

Forms of adultify

third-person singular presentadultifies
present participleadultifying
past participleadultified
pastadultified

Origin of adultify

From adult + -ify, likely a back-formation from adultification.

Words formed from adultify

Questions about adultify

What does adultify mean?
Adultify means to treat a non-adult like an adult.
What part of speech is adultify?
Adultify is a verb.
What is the past tense of adultify?
The past tense of adultify is adultified.

Words near adultify in the dictionary

  1. adultiest
  2. adultification
  3. adultified
  4. adultifies
  5. adultiform
  6. adultify
  7. adultifying
  8. adulting
  9. adultisation
  10. adultise
  11. adultised

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: adultify (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “adultify.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/adultify. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.