“Childish” Usually Criticizes Behavior; “Childlike” Suggests Charm and Wonder

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, my name is Sue Carroll Elvin.

Hi, Sue, where are you calling from?

Panama City, Florida.

Oh, welcome to the show.

Thank you.

What’s going on in the panhandle?

Well, my husband is English, and as you may have caught a little glimpse of this accent, I am Southern.

And occasionally we have a little difference in our wording.

And lately, it’s gotten to be where I get by correcting for putting the empty milk jug back in the refrigerator or unwrapping a present or something and just throwing the paper down rather than that.

I’ll say this is childish.

And he says, no, no, no, that’s childlike.

Well, this goes on and on, and his definition is that childlike refers to an adult, and that childish refers to a youth or a child.

And I think that childish is negative, and childlike is positive.

Mm—

So, who’s right?

I think you are.

I do, too.

Yeah, next time he says that, you have to say poppycock, because he’s just redefining the words to suit his needs.

Great.

Well, also, I heard another connotation.

We were over at Friends watching a silly Christmas movie, Christmas Vacation with Chevy Case.

And they had the narrator on, the cast and the crew were telling all about the movie.

And I heard one of the cast say that the animation was childlike, and that might refer to childlike being appearance and childish, which might mean behavior, which I think I had heard Grant say that at one time.

Yeah, I think generally you’re right that childish has a certain derogatory connotation, like a lot of words that end in ish, like foolish or boorish or selfish.

And childlike connotes more of that charm and wonder of childhood.

The innocence of a child, right?

Yeah, the innocence.

The kind of special naiveness that makes them so wonderful to talk to sometimes.

Yeah, and I’m not quite sure why that is, but I think it was probably influenced a great deal by the use of childish in the Bible, I would think.

You know, the Apostle Paul writes about putting away childish things rather than putting away childlike things in Ecclesiastes and other books.

In Hebrew scripture, there’s talk about childish leaders or, woe to you, O land, when your king is childish.

Childlike in any of those contexts would be something different.

It would.

It would mean that you were the form or features of a child.

Yeah, that’s a good way to put it.

And not so much about the negative childlike behaviors.

Behavior, exactly.

Now, there are a lot of nuances to both of these words, like most words in English.

So it would be wrong to say that there’s just one meaning.

But Martha really nailed the key point here, which is many of the meanings of childish and all the variation are negative.

And none of the meanings of childlike and all the variations are negative unless you think being a child is a problem.

Yes.

Hopefully not.

Anyway, that sounds great.

Oh, wonderful.

Thank you so much, Sue.

Thank you.

Take care now.

Bye-bye.

Call us again sometime.

We appreciate it.

Bye-bye.

All right.

Bye-bye.

It’s the gentle disputes between couples.

Yeah.

Sometimes it’s between fathers and sons or mothers and daughters or some variation.

Those gentle disputes, they often manifest in language.

And they’re not really about the language always, are they?

No, they’re not.

And they’re a good reason to talk, right?

Yeah.

A good reason to sort of tease out.

The proxy for the bigger issue can be handled through discussing language with us.

Although I think she was really glad that she was right.

Who isn’t?

I took that away.

Who isn’t?

If you want to be right or wrong or want us to decide who’s right or wrong, give us a call, 877-929-9673.

Tell us about your marital linguistic woes to words@waywordradio.org.