How to Use childish in a Sentence

childish

adjective
  • She has a childish face.
  • We're tired of their childish games.
  • He opened the gifts with childish delight.
  • I find his humor very childish.
  • That would be childish as hell.
    — Selome Hailu, Variety, 4 Mar. 2026
  • Who knew such a childish game could teach such valuable lessons.
    — CBS News, 10 June 2018
  • Such tics may seem childish, but a lot of voters love this stuff.
    — Simon Shuster / Zurich, Time, 7 Mar. 2018
  • Some childish games are way harder for adults to play than meets the eye.
    — Gil Kaufman, Billboard, 29 Dec. 2021
  • To try to escape those things was childish and anti‐novelistic.
    — Elif Batuman, The New Yorker, 18 Apr. 2022
  • What sort of adult male speaks that slowly, in such a soft, childish tone?
    — Heather Havrilesky, The Cut, 31 May 2018
  • What good does this kind of base, childish rhetoric do for any single one of us?
    — Katherine Timpf, National Review, 12 Oct. 2017
  • The whole tweet story now feels almost like a childish tale.
    — Georg Szalai, HollywoodReporter, 13 May 2026
  • See, the issue here isn’t that a college dude did a dumb, childish thing.
    — Sean Keeler, Denver Post, 28 Apr. 2025
  • The games are childish with grave stakes, which almost feels like a metaphor for life itself.
    — Brooklyn White, Essence, 6 Oct. 2021
  • These people are so childish and petty.
    — U T Readers, San Diego Union-Tribune, 28 Jan. 2026
  • The Warriors star was not going to be called childish over that.
    — Andrew Joseph, For The Win, 18 Jan. 2018
  • DeChambeau has shown a childish side at times, for better and for worse.
    — Jason Lusk, USA TODAY, 2 Oct. 2021
  • As a teenager, there was a phase when Barbie thought her name was childish.
    — Anne Branigin, Washington Post, 15 July 2023
  • Yes, there may have been some childish instinct to defend Twain.
    — John Jeremiah Sullivan, Harpers Magazine, 29 Apr. 2025
  • There’s a very childish part of ourselves that needs to separate these things.
    — Tim Gray, Variety, 27 Jan. 2022
  • We’re not bound to the childish hair accessories or club-ready tops anymore.
    — Frances Solá-Santiago, refinery29.com, 28 Oct. 2021
  • That was a childish goal of the sort that had led her to challenge deëxtinction for so many years.
    — D. T. Max, New Yorker, 7 Apr. 2025
  • Techcrunch reacts to an embargo break in the most childish, toys-out-of-pram way.
    — Ed Yong, Discover Magazine, 25 Aug. 2012
  • That’s as childish an expression as the show ever shares.
    — Alison Herman, Variety, 13 Apr. 2026
  • Acting childish doesn't have to mean throwing tantrums on the floor, either.
    — Natasha Burton, Woman's Day, 13 Nov. 2018
  • When Smith drives us in the golf cart, hunched close to the wheel, a look of childish mischief spreads over his face.
    — Sam Kestenbaum, Vulture, 2 Jan. 2026
  • This one has a charming clover shape to make your space feel animated, but not childish.
    — Julia Harrison, Architectural Digest, 12 June 2026
  • And their children, who weren’t quite old enough to get it, got it in a childish way, by playing a game upstairs.
    — Ed Symkus, BostonGlobe.com, 20 June 2019
  • Its pain is what leads Maverick, the film suggests, to put away childish things.
    — Megan Garber, The Atlantic, 15 June 2021
  • The thing is, the childish anger expressed by Mars in Cancer can’t phase you.
    — Randon Rosenbohm, Allure, 30 Apr. 2019

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'childish.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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