How to Use puerile in a Sentence

puerile

adjective
  • The Twits are so gross and puerile and nasty in the book.
    — Wilson Chapman, IndieWire, 17 Oct. 2025
  • Yes, much of the laughs come from a puerile place, but there’s some genuine heart amid the gags.
    — New York Times, 13 Feb. 2020
  • But there’s something puerile about seeing all these male nubbins.
    — Raven Smith, Vogue, 26 Jan. 2022
  • Forcing a country to cater to the palate of a 70-year-old might seem puerile and self-absorbed.
    — Kenzie Bryant, Vanities, 19 May 2017
  • The puerile sense of humor gave way to more sophisticated jokes, ones that work for children and adults.
    — Gieson Cacho Tribune News Service, Star Tribune, 30 June 2021
  • The musical strips out all the grit, replacing it with puerile moral homilies.
    — Tirdad Derakhshani, Philly.com, 4 Oct. 2017
  • The siblings’ exchanges are, as always, delightfully barbed and a bit puerile.
    — Brandon Taylor, The New Yorker, 26 Mar. 2023
  • So many movies nowadays are full of noise and mayhem and puerile effects, and Land, refreshingly, has none of that.
    — Michael Granberry, Dallas News, 12 Feb. 2021
  • Her job here is to eye-roll at the puerile antics and then to cue the audience’s warm, fuzzy feeling about these allegedly lovable lunkheads.
    — Michael Phillips, chicagotribune.com, 14 June 2018
  • But no public figure would go further than that, given the genre’s reputation for being puerile and pulpy.
    — Craig Fehrman, New York Times, 23 May 2018
  • On the contrary, Abraham undercuts his argument with such puerile rhetoric.
    — Keith Kloor, Discover Magazine, 22 Feb. 2013
  • In middle age, becoming too buddy-buddy with another person can frankly seem puerile.
    — New York Times, 12 Apr. 2021
  • Wednesday Addams would never want to be in a work that’s puerile and underdramatized.
    — Vulture, 7 June 2023
  • Platter's line is thick and insistent but wasted on empty scrawls, unremarkable shapes and puerile phrases.
    — Leah Ollman, latimes.com, 4 June 2018
  • The search engine on the firm’s website started offering customers puerile responses to their inquiries.
    — The Economist, 3 May 2018
  • And with that puerile quarrel between stubborn warlords over the right to own and to rape a girl, Western literature begins.
    — Judith Thurman, The New Yorker, 11 Sep. 2023
  • Much of this, of course, is childhood fabrication; puerile hero worship leaving an indelible mark on my memory.
    — Aram Mrjoian, Longreads, 15 June 2019
  • The inexplicable twists are interspersed with puerile action scenes.
    — Kyle Chayka, The New Yorker, 13 Feb. 2024
  • That kind of decorous vulgarity is a major component here, along with more puerile genital jokes than your average frat house.
    — David Rooney, The Hollywood Reporter, 10 Apr. 2020
  • This, amid another example of the puerile behavior that too many Flyers fans are too happy to exhibit.
    — Mike Sielski, Philly.com, 16 Apr. 2018
  • As a technician, Eminem hasn’t changed much over the years, but gone is his sense of whimsy, his puerile gift for social rebellion, his underdog thirst.
    — Jon Caramanica, New York Times, 18 Dec. 2017
  • Marvel’s sketches for the film were less puerile but wholly impressionistic, and so Carter began her customary deep dive.
    — Rob Haskell, WSJ, 1 Nov. 2018
  • One pundit hired by Bannon was Milo Yiannopoulos, who specialized in puerile insults.
    — Adam Davidson, The New Yorker, 17 Mar. 2017
  • Silence that puerile soundtrack and enjoy the trademark handling and roadholding qualities Sir Alec would be proud of.
    — Georg Kacher, Car and Driver, 6 May 2023
  • The pop-punk that Joyce Manor inherited was often juvenile and sometimes puerile, self-loathing but rarely sympathetic.
    — Jon Caramanica, New York Times, 12 Oct. 2016
  • The contrast between puerile bits about pissing and resonant reflections on slow-motion death is an effective one, enhancing the impact of each tactic in turn.
    — Alison Herman, Variety, 30 June 2026
  • The official rationale for the House GOP plan is not, of course, to help the president realize a puerile dream.
    — Ed Kilgore, Daily Intelligencer, 4 May 2018
  • Hemingway, demonstrating yet again the quality of his friendship, denounced the essays as an act of puerile exhibitionism.
    — Christopher Buckley, WSJ, 2 Sep. 2022
  • The gaslighting, the puerile tweets, the divisiveness, the rampant ignorance and the utter inability to put the country before his fragile ego.
    — S.e. Cupp Tribune News Service (tns), Star Tribune, 7 Aug. 2020
  • But his character flaws—narcissism, lack of self-control, abusive treatment of advisers, his puerile vendettas—interfered with that success.
    — The Editorial Board, WSJ, 14 Nov. 2022

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'puerile.' 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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