Word.ws English Dictionary

puerilism

puerilism noun: childlike behavior by an adult, especially as indicating a mental disorder.

Noun

puerilism (usually uncountable, plural puerilisms)

  1. (usually) Childlike behavior by an adult, especially as indicating a mental disorder.
    • With regard to hysteria; in dissociation there may be a secondary time disorder; for example a patient with puerilism said: "People all seem grown up and older. And my Mum, I'm sure I know her from a long time ago. I look at her, but I can't make it out."1932, Aubrey Lewis, "The Experience of Time in Mental Disorder," reprinted in Inquiries in Psychiatry (Routledge, 2013), p. 14 (Google preview)
    • [T]he Dutchman Johan Huizenga, who coined the term puerilism in the 1930s . . . defined it as permanent puberty.1962, Walter Laqueur, Young Germany: A History of the German Youth Movement, →ISBN, page xi

Forms of puerilism

pluralpuerilisms

Origin of puerilism

From puerile + -ism.

Questions about puerilism

What does puerilism mean?
Puerilism means childlike behavior by an adult, especially as indicating a mental disorder.
What part of speech is puerilism?
Puerilism is a noun.
What is the plural of puerilism?
The plural of puerilism is puerilisms.

Words near puerilism in the dictionary

  1. pueri aeterni
  2. puericulture
  3. puerile
  4. puerilely
  5. puerileness
  6. puerilism
  7. puerilisms
  8. puerilities
  9. puerility
  10. puerilization
  11. puerpera

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: puerilism (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: “puerilism.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/puerilism. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.