Unchildly

adj

adj ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Adjective
  1. 1
    Not childly.

    "For the rest recourse must be had to what does not belong to human childhood: his brow must be made the seat of unchildly power and wisdom; he must wear the glance of prescience and the gesture of authority, even if he has not to sit on his mother’s knee as on a throne, and hold out his fingers in the solemnity of benediction."

Example

More examples

"For the rest recourse must be had to what does not belong to human childhood: his brow must be made the seat of unchildly power and wisdom; he must wear the glance of prescience and the gesture of authority, even if he has not to sit on his mother’s knee as on a throne, and hold out his fingers in the solemnity of benediction."

Etymology

From un- + childly.

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.