Puerile means childish in a silly way. Puerile humour, puerile behaviour, frankly puerile.
It is stronger than childish and entirely an insult, since it says an adult is behaving like a boy. The Latin behind it simply means boyish, with no judgement in it at all, and English supplied the contempt.
1adjectivepuerileChildish in a silly way.
“The comedian's puerile jokes about toilets made only the teenagers laugh.”
puerile is a quality.
The Latin puer is a boy. Puerile is behaving like one when you are years past being a boy.
hooks ontoboy
Latin puerilis means boyish, from puer, a boy.
Proto-Indo-European
*peh₂w-
Latin
puerīlis — childish
English, today
puerile
Built from
From Latin puerīlis (“childish”), from puer (“child, boy”). by surface analysis, puer + -ile.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA