Childism
noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 Responding to children's particular lived experiences countable, uncountable
"Twain and Salinger's common genius, Heiserman and Miller suggest, lay in their masterful use of a colloquial American adolescent's voice to convey their respective "childism," by which they mean the nostalgic wish to recover our inner Adamic child."
- 2 Empowering children as an oppressed group countable, uncountable
- 3 Prejudice and/or discrimination against the young. countable, uncountable
- 4 A child-like insight or behavior made by an adult countable
"About the same time I was working on my life is a circle theory, I was also working on a childism that could define human behavior and explain why people behave the way they do and predict their behavior."
Example
More examples"Twain and Salinger's common genius, Heiserman and Miller suggest, lay in their masterful use of a colloquial American adolescent's voice to convey their respective "childism," by which they mean the nostalgic wish to recover our inner Adamic child."
Etymology
From child + -ism.
Related phrases
More for "childism"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.