Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use callow in a sentence

11 example sentences · adjective, noun

Callow means immature, inexperienced, or naive. Example: “Those three young men are particularly callow youths.”

Examples of callow by meaning

adjectiveHaving no hair; bald, bare, hairless.

  • There was a sense abroad as he spoke that the world was rocking together to great music, and this callow-headed professor by the table had caught a note of it.1916 July 1, S. Macnaughton, “Some Elderly People and Their Young Friends. Chapter V.”, in The Living Age, volume III (8th Series; volume...
  • This time it held a callow-headed baby in a pink frock.1944, Chambers’s Journal of Popular Literature, Science and Art, London; Edinburgh: W. & R. Chambers […], →OCLC, page 225, column 1
  • These hands were marked of hard work and yet soft enough to tenderly hold the baby's little callow head.2011, Altea [pseudonym], chapter 3, in Happiness Was a Red Cadillac, [Bloomington, Ind.]: Xlibris, →ISBN, page 17

adjectiveLacking life experience; immature, inexperienced, naive; also, of or relating to something immature or inexperienced.

  • Those three young men are particularly callow youths.
  • This was a 20-year-old local lad, product of down the road, out-thinking Barcelona, making them look like callow, pigeon-chested schoolboys.2019 May 8, Barney Ronay, “Liverpool’s waves of red fury and recklessness end in joyous bedlam”, in Katharine Viner, editor, The Guardian...

adjectiveIn the life cycle of an animal: newly born or hatched; juvenile.

  • a callow bee

More sentences with callow

  • But Hardy's roughcast good looks and self-assurance made Nick look callow.2008, Lisa Kleypas, Blue-Eyed Devil: A Novel. From the entry roughcast
  • As a callow sixth-former with an overinflated sense of my own poetic importance, I was in need of friendly advice and encouragement.2009 January 29, “Obituary letter: John Fairfax”, in The Guardian. From the entry overinflated
  • Callow, guffawish, no longer her meat.1959, Anthony Burgess, Beds in the East (The Malayan Trilogy), published 1972, page 613. From the entry guffawish
  • It is a strange performance, the clash of callow self-certainty with a certain innate modesty, resolved in a (typically Zweigian) stance of passivity and helplessness and evasion (‘probably’).2010 January 28, Michael Hofmann, “Vermicular Dither”, in London Review of Books, volume 32, number 02, →ISSN. From the entry Zweigian
  • The scallops are pounded and watchfully cooked to maximize their callow tenderness, which is further italicized by the mushroomiest sauce on the block, glowing with fine Marsala wine.1995, Brian Karsh, “Before and After”, in TheaterWeek, volume 9, New York, N.Y.: That New Magazine, Inc., →ISSN, page 54, column 3. From the entry mushroomy

Meaning of callow

  1. adjective Immature, inexperienced, or naive.
  2. adjective Having no hair; bald, bare, hairless.
  3. adjective Of a brick: unburnt.

Full definition of callow

Questions about callow in a sentence

How do you use callow in a sentence?
Callow is used as an adjective and noun. For example: “Those three young men are particularly callow youths.”
What is a short sentence with callow?
“a callow bee”
What does callow mean?
Callow means immature, inexperienced, or naive.

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: callow (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this page: “How to use callow in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/callow. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.