What is the difference, the real difference, between the words juvenile, infantile and puerile? Yes, I know they all mean immature and silly. But individually, how do they differ in meaning, if any way, from each other?
Also, in grade school and high school grammar class, they told us there is connotation versus denotation. I guess that is my real question too. How would they differ, say, in a sentence from each other? And as I said, indeed, do they?
Thank you in advance for your helpful and civil replies .
Well, etymologically, juvenile derives from the Latin word for youth, and puerile from the Latin word for boy, and infantile is self-explanatory. But I don’t think that there’s much to be gained by trying to fix a “real” meaning when they’re all used metaphorically and with disapproval.
In my perception, “puerile” would be a bit more “loutish/laddish”, but there’s not a lot in it.
Juvenile doesn’t necessarily mean silly, it can also be a formal or legalistic adjective for all things pertaining to youth, such as juvenile delinquency. My father used to be a judge dealing, among other things, with criminal case a involving minors, and while he would have been happy being described as a juvenile judge, I think he’d take offence at being called a silly or immature judge.
Semantically, the age you’d call juvenile is the teenage years, whereas infantile and puerile refer to younger years. So perhaps even in the meaning of “silliness”, juvenile is more teenage-style humour than childish humour.
Infant comes from pre-verbal / unable to speak may have some relevance to the OP. Though some languages, particularly french use enfant as a word for child, so equivalent of Juvenile and perhaps that’s where the expression comes from.
The way they were described to me in English class was that denotation was the ‘official’ definition of a word, whereas connotation was a less formally defined but more nuanced meaning that a word can take on over time. An example was given of the words ‘childish’ vs. ‘childlike’. The denotation of the two words makes them synonyms. But the connotation of ‘childish’ is negative-- immature and unserious; the connotation of ‘childlike’ is positive-- innocent and pure.
The one time I ever heard “puerile” in conversation was when someone called our college radio station to chew us out for broadcasting the “puerile nonsense” linked below. (I believe it was around a minute in.)
When you’re talking about the implied subtext of words rather than their literal meaning, reach for the noun connotation . A political boss might not want to be called “boss” because of the negative connotations . Continue reading…
Denotation means the literal meaning of a word or name. Although Paris might make you think of romance, its denotation is simply “the city of an old tribe called the Parisii.”
You’re asking about the connotations of the words, or a usage question. Usage questions don’t have factual answers, unfortunately; they’re always the topic of heated discussions.
Since an infant is less advanced than an older youth, I’d consider calling someone infantile to be harsher than juvenile. This site ranks harshness from juvenile to puerile to infantile. (Click on puerile.) I’d disagree and put puerile on top. Why? Because it’s an obscure latinate word, so that I wouldn’t use it unless I were reaching for a sick burn. But I couldn’t come up with a good linguistic reason to justify that.
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