Definitions
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun Childish humor or playfulness; sportive gayety of a child.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun obsolete The manner characteristic of a child.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun obsolete The manner that is characteristic of a
child .
Etymologies
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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I believe this freedom is compromised in many instances by the dichotomy of the child-womanthe blurred sexuality of the young female runner evolving into womanhood, secure at first in the perfect form of her childness in flight and then confronting new contradictions and conflicts over her maturing body.
Young Runners Marc Bloom 2009
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I reminded Marcus that Anna Paquin won the Oscar for best supporting actress for The Piano when she was still in grade school, so he shouldn't discount the power of childness to win awards.
Archive 2009-04-01 Dodie Bellamy 2009
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I reminded Marcus that Anna Paquin won the Oscar for best supporting actress for The Piano when she was still in grade school, so he shouldn't discount the power of childness to win awards.
Lambda Nominee Reading Dodie Bellamy 2009
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By 8:00 she had thrown up four or five times, her head was killing her, she was a pathetic heap of sick-childness, and we headed for the pediatrician's office.
Archive 2005-10-01 Becca 2005
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By 8:00 she had thrown up four or five times, her head was killing her, she was a pathetic heap of sick-childness, and we headed for the pediatrician's office.
A Day at the Hospital Becca 2005
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He paused and looked at her, and then all at once something in the utter childness of her beauty seemed to puncture his anger like an inflated tire, and render him helpless, uncertain, utterly fatuous.
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I am French and very happy to see what was my childness.
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I am French and very happy to see what was my childness.
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He paused and looked at her, and then all at once something in the utter childness of her beauty seemed to puncture his anger like an inflated tire, and render him helpless, uncertain, utterly fatuous.
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Aren't you a spoiled child, without the childness and the spoiling, to go and write in that plaintive, solemn way about 'help of some connexions of Jane's in Glasgow,' as if you were a desolate orphan
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