puellile
/p(j)uˈɛlˌaɪl/
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 0.00 in modern English
10
Scrabble Score
8
Letters
3
Syllables
5
Unique Chars
Meaning
Example Sentences
- "One weak and puerile (or puellile; or anile) articles^([sic]) does a journal more harm than two good articles can neutralize."
- "[The tale] would be too puellile—may we coin a word?—for strictures, had not the writer challenged them by her introduction."
- "Of pass-times puellile."
- "Andrew Carnegie has found “the prettiest girl in the world” in Pittsburgh. Never having sojourned in North Carolina, Uncle Andy has no conception of what puellile loveliness can be."
- "And little Audrey, too! What a rascal she is! Why, when she looked at her date for the prom, little Audrey just laughed and laughed … / All this, we admit, is rather puellile—(hooray, we’ve coined a word!) … And so we’ll become puerile at once—and give you the willies!"
- "The dialogue with Ann-Margret on screen is puerile (or is it puellile?) and insulting to the audience."
Etymology
From Latin puella (“female child, girl”) + English -ile (suffix meaning ‘capable of; tending to’ forming adjectives), modelled after puerile. Puella is derived from puellus (“male child, young boy”) + -a (feminine form of -us); puellus is a contraction of puerulus (“little boy; little slave”), from puer (“boy, lad; male page, servant, or slave; child”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *peh₂w- (“few, little; smallness”)) + -ulus (“suffix forming diminutives of nouns indicating small size or youth”).
Origin
- Source language: Latin
Word Breakdown
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /p(j)uˈɛlˌaɪl/
- British English: /p(j)uːˈɛlaɪl/
Usage
Inflected Forms
more puellile (comparative)
most puellile (superlative)