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Babyish   /bˈeɪbiɪʃ/   Listen
Babyish

adjective
1.
Characteristic of a baby.






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"Babyish" Quotes from Famous Books



... Swift always addresses both Stella and her companion Mistress Dingley, and the letters are everywhere full of tender, childish nonsense. He invented what he called a "little language," using all sorts of quaint and babyish words and strange strings of capital letters, M. D., for instance, meaning my dears, M. E., Madam Elderly, or D. D., Dear Dingley, and so on. Throughout, too, we come on little bits of doggerel rimes, bad puns, simple jokes, ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall

... kites, and house kites. A bow kite could be made with half a barrel hoop carried over the top of a cross, but it was troublesome to make, and it did not fly very well, and somehow it was thought to look babyish; but it was held in greater respect than the two-stick kite, which only the smallest boys played with, and which was made by fastening two sticks in the form of a cross. Any fellow more than six years old who appeared on the Commons with a two-stick kite would have been met with jeers, as ...
— Boy Life - Stories and Readings Selected From The Works of William Dean Howells • William Dean Howells

... suppose I am turning to my second childhood, for not only am I filled drunk, or made stupid at least, with one bottle of wine, but I am disabled from writing by chilblains on my fingers—a most babyish complaint. They say that the character is indicated by the handwriting; if so, ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott

... well, business prospering, would be home in the time specified, and I was sorry that I had been so foolish; the days were pleasant, and he needed change; he might have made a pleasant excursion of it if I had not been so babyish; and I told Willie of all my weakness, and I promised I would never give way again. I knew my husband was never so happy as when at home; he was ambitious in his profession, a stirring business man; it would be necessary for him to go ...
— Choice Readings for the Home Circle • Anonymous

... far, will you come with me to the Riviera, or to Florence, or Sicily—or Cairo?" the other asked, adjusting her gold- brown wig with her babyish hands. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... scoffed at his moans, and thought it babyish, for a muscular man over six feet to show so many signs of pain. I think that from some cause, the surgeon felt vindictive toward him, and that his subordinates took their cue from him. When I went to give him lemonade, he would clutch my hand or dress, look ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm

... of clergy. But he kept himself well in hand and talked calmly on impersonal subjects. After all, it was Katherine who made the first break when she got up to say good-bye. She was in the middle of some conventional sentence when she suddenly stopped short, and her voice trailed off in a babyish quiver. ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... was in good spirits, and quite a number of 'em. The boy wus feelin' well too. He had a little black velvet suit and a deep lace collar, and his gold curls was a hangin' down under his little black velvet cap. They made him look more babyish; but I believe Cicely kept 'em so to make him look young, she felt so dubersome about his future. But he looked sweet enough to kiss right there in ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)

... fall," she said shaking back her hair, and making effective use of her babyish mouth; "and he thinks no end of me. But the other week I was sick, and as I lay in bed, I sung some—just for fun. And my landlady—she's a regular singer herself—who was fixing up the room, she claps her hands together and says: 'My goodness me! Why YOU have a ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson

... time must bring me wealth and fame, and an entry into those circles whither I wished to return, to exercise the royal privileges of a man of genius. You all saw nothing in that masterpiece but the blunder of a young man fresh from college, a babyish fiasco. Your jokes clipped the wings of a throng of illusions, which have never stirred since within me. You, dear Emile, alone brought soothing to the deep wounds that others had made in my heart. You alone will admire my 'Theory of the Will.' I devoted most of my ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac

... on his desk flared up fitfully and as he turned to lower the wick his eyes fell on Connie's picture. The uplifted babyish face came back to him as he had first seen it under floating cherry-colored ribbons, and his anger of the last half-hour melted and vanished utterly away. For the sake of those few months, when the waning fire within ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow

... sitting up against her pillows. A few weeks before Isobel would have scorned such a "babyish" suggestion from ...
— Highacres • Jane Abbott

... throat, it was on the influence of Miss Cunyngham's lucky sixpence—the pierced coin was secretly attached to his watch-chain—that he relied. In fact, before he had gone far from the lodge, he removed that babyish protection against the rain and stuck it in his pocket; he was not going to throw out a red ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black

... forlorn group of supplicants. "I'm sure I don't know why I have not ordered you all soundly thrashed for your imbecility and cowardice. I shall send you my surgeon to examine your wounds, and see whether the thumps you make such a babyish outcry about really were as violent and overpowering as you represent. If they were not, I will have you skinned alive, every mother's son of you, like the eels at Melun; and now, begone! out of my sight, quick, you vile canaille!" The discomfited ruffians turned and ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier

... little more than seven years old, he was too much of a boy quite to enjoy his position on the master's shoulder. He felt it too babyish to be altogether honorable to the protector of Lenichen and incipient bread-winner of the family. And, therefore, he was relieved when he found himself once ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, January 1878, No. 3 • Various

... he reached the Oaks and went in. Luncheon was on the table, at which Belle was sitting. She was, as usual, dressed in black, and beautiful to look on; but her round babyish face was pale and pinched, and there were black lines ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard

... very careless child," she would say. "I am afraid you will never be the neat housekeeper your grandmother was;" or, "Edna, that exhibition of temper over little things must be controlled; it is a very serious fault." Again it would be, "You are very babyish, and lack self-control; there is no need of crying over such a small matter as a little blister on your finger." And Edna wondered if she were expected to be like the Spartan boy who held the fox under his ...
— A Dear Little Girl • Amy E. Blanchard

... impunity, he began babyish hydraulic engineering. He delved a huge port for his paper fleets with an old shed door that served him as a spade, and, no one chancing to observe his operations just then, he devised an ingenious canal that incidentally flooded Lady Wondershoot's ice-house, and finally he dammed the river. He ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells

... something on the boat,' remarked Ruby; who, by the way, was good to look at—a black-eyed lass with regular features and lots of pink and white complexion. Pearl, languidly sipping her beer, nodded in the affirmative. This person, evidently the younger of the two, had a babyish face, big innocent blue eyes, and a profusion of fluffy yellow hair. She did not appeal as much to my sense of the beautiful as the dark one did; but I have always been partial to brunettes. She told ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald

... girl some years older than herself, a small, plump, rounded creature, with a flaunting and insouciant prettiness. Her eyes were dark and bright, her babyish lips were full and scarlet, her nose was whimsically uptilted. Dark hair curled closely to the vivid face and fell in ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley

... you might give some thought to your family. Nina is going now." She spoke in a babyish, aggrieved tone. He did not look up, and Mrs. Randolph did not repeat her remark; she turned instead to her daughter. "Go in and tell your father that I think he might pay ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post

... friends of mine who preside in the Temple of Chance yonder. Oh, don't assume that babyish pout! I've won enough back to keep going for the balance of ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers

... Greek and Latin drama do not at all help the argument, and, whatever may have been thought of them by the generation which fancied that Christ Church had refuted Bentley, are such as, in the present day, a scholar of very humble pretensions may venture to pronounce boyish, or rather babyish. The censures are not sufficiently discriminating. The authors whom Collier accused had been guilty of such gross sins against decency that he was certain to weaken instead of strengthening his case, by ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... conviction that he had been actually on the point of behaving as one gentleman may not behave to another. Quick was he to make the encounter accord with the child's happy view, even picking him up and forcing from himself the gaiety to rally him upon his babyish tenderness to rough play. Not less did he hold it true that "The rod and reproof give wisdom, but a child left to himself bringeth his mother to shame—" and with the older boy he was not unconscientious in this matter. For Allan took punishment as ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson

... through the barren paths of hopelessness and despair, while yet he had to keep his children in countenance under their fire of childish prattle. Many times he could have flung aside his mask and given up, but the babyish laughter held him to an effort such as he had never before ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum

... look so sorry! It was babyish of me, but just for one moment—I was so fond of dancing, you know, and I had ...
— Tom and Some Other Girls - A Public School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... however, and they turned homewards, Frances felt that if she had not promised Barbara to help her mother she would have hidden herself in the attic and cried, although that would have been so "horribly babyish" for a girl of twelve that she knew she would have felt ashamed of herself afterwards; though perhaps, her pillow could have told tales of a grief confided to it that the gay-hearted Frances did ...
— Barbara in Brittany • E. A. Gillie

... colt, pup, foal, kitten; lamb, lambkin[obs3]; aurelia[obs3], caterpillar, cocoon, nymph, nympha[obs3], orphan, pupa, staddle[obs3]. girl; lass, lassie; wench, miss, damsel, demoiselle; maid, maiden; virgin; hoyden. Adj. infantine[obs3], infantile; puerile; boyish, girlish, childish, babyish, kittenish; baby; newborn, unfledged, new-fledged, callow. in the cradle, in swaddling clothes, in long clothes, in arms, in leading strings; at ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... could see that there was any disgrace in being a mother-boy. But I suppose a boy thinks he is called babyish, if the name is fastened on him. As Harry went on his errand, he no longer whistled, at least he didn't whistle much. And as he went to school next day, and next day, and next day, and found himself left out in the cold, he would have been more than the usual twelve-year-old laddie if he had not ...
— Holiday Stories for Young People • Various

... girl who was singing badly a small role in a certain comic opera at the time of these occurrences. She had a babyish manner across the footlights, and she was thought to be a blonde, for she was wearing a yellow wig over her own short black hair that season. Her first name ...
— Tales From Bohemia • Robert Neilson Stephens

... an energetic shake, and knitting her brow in a childish frown, "that's babyish. You'll strike on every rock and bend before each gale if you talk in such a fashion. Don't be a fool, Nellie; pluck up some spirit, and show Ada Irvine you're above her contempt." Winnie spoke as if possessed with all the wisdom of the ancients, and gave due emphasis to every ...
— Aunt Judith - The Story of a Loving Life • Grace Beaumont

... forager, financier—overcome at last with the fulness of the situation, made a really babyish square mouth, and threw himself sobbing ...
— Solomon Crow's Christmas Pockets and Other Tales • Ruth McEnery Stuart

... to the grocery. Big sister has come out and climbed on the vegetable-stand, and is sitting in the potatoes with little sister in her lap. Little sister waves her fat, red arms in the air and shrieks in babyish delight. The old women with the shawls over their heads are talking together, crooning over the spectacle in ...
— Jersey Street and Jersey Lane - Urban and Suburban Sketches • H. C. Bunner

... They're so different from ours! Why, when I first saw Barbara that day at the train, I thought it was the funniest thing that her hair was all hanging loose down her back. I wouldn't think of being so babyish! I thought perhaps she'd lost off her ribbon maybe, but she's worn it that way ever since. And her little sailor-hat looks so countrified as she has it,—'way down ...
— John and Betty's History Visit • Margaret Williamson

... could keep you always," she said, poutingly. "You look so nice and babyish!" But she knew that she could not keep him, and after a time she stood up again and sighed, and fell to stroking him thoughtfully. "I'll have you to-day, anyway," she declared, finally, with promise of enjoyment in ...
— Bred of the Desert - A Horse and a Romance • Marcus Horton

... the staff. Like Cheon she carried her qualifications on the tip of her tongue: "Me savey scrub 'im, and sweep 'im, and wash 'im, and blue 'im, and starch 'im," she said glibly, with a flash of white teeth against a babyish pink tongue. She was wearing a freshly washed bright blue dress, hanging loosely from her shoulders, and looked so prettily jolly, clean, capable, and curly-headed, that I immediately made her housemaid ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn

... says funny things herself. I cannot understand her. She only laughs when she does something; and, nine times out of ten, it is something in which I cannot see anything to laugh at—something which— well, if it were not Cecilia, I should say was rather silly and babyish. I never did see any fun in playing foolish tricks on people, and worrying them in all sorts of ways. Hatty just enjoys it; ...
— Out in the Forty-Five - Duncan Keith's Vow • Emily Sarah Holt

... woman, who stood beside the tray, who fed her and warmed her while she was yet weak and babyish from sleep! Beyond her the white plains of beauty shone outside the window.... She sat up and ...
— The Happy Foreigner • Enid Bagnold

... belonged to this order of artists. He had a wild, stormy, November eye, a wealth of loose, brownish-black hair combed upward from the temples, with one lock straggling Napoleonically down toward the eyes; cheeks that had almost a babyish tint to them; lips much too rich, red, and sensuous; a nose that was fine and large and full, but only faintly aquiline; and eyebrows and mustache that somehow seemed to flare quite like his errant ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser

... flitted across Isy's face, and with it returned the almost babyish look that used to form part of her charm. Like an obedient child, she set herself to eat and drink what she could; and when she had evidently done ...
— Salted With Fire • George MacDonald

... reply, and blushed far into his brick-colored hair. He was of an age when a babyish diminutive becomes a thorn unspeakable. Mrs. Weatherwax glanced tranquilly past his ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther

... now wearing a new jacket, with a small collar, such as cabmen wore later. For him a jacket to stuff in the trousers was a thing of the past. It "looked so babyish," the young ladies said, and was "out of the question now when the boy ...
— Walter Pieterse - A Story of Holland • Multatuli

... Agatha knelt by the sofa, Miss Valery leaned over her, twisting her curls and stroking down the lids over her brown eyes in the babyish, fondling ways which all good people can condescend to at times, ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)

... high and the great winds drew heavily in from sea. The sound had always made him afraid; and to-day, though there was no wind, and the tide was so far out that it made no noise but a soft whisper, silken and persuasive, he held back with babyish timidity, till his mother brought him to his senses with an unceremonious cuff on the side of the head. With a squall of grieved surprise he picked himself up, shaking his head as if he had a bee in his ear, ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts

... counted his convalescence as among the golden memories of his boyhood, no school and endless goodies. For Hubert, sixteen years old and five feet, ten inches, in height, it was reserved to go through the disease alone. He was not seriously ill; but his whole soul revolted at the babyish nature of his complaint, and at the tedium ...
— Teddy: Her Book - A Story of Sweet Sixteen • Anna Chapin Ray

... rocking yourself backward and forward and nursing your foot seem rather foolish,—indeed you have perhaps often been told that they are both foolish and babyish,—but, as you say, you "can't help it," and there is a good reason for it. The howl is a call for help; and if the hurt were due to the bite of a wolf or a bear, or the cut had gone deep enough to open an artery, this dreadfully unmusical noise might ...
— A Handbook of Health • Woods Hutchinson

... requests, even though they were sometimes childish and often impossible to gratify? Would he have been better pleased if you had shut up everything in your own heart, and never of your own accord told him anything about your babyish ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall

... you know," she said. "He couldn't always be as gentle and loving as when he was a child. A young man would think that so babyish. He wants, as he says, to be independent, and not tied to a woman's apron-string. But in his heart of hearts he loves me best in the whole world, and he wouldn't have been ashamed to let me see it at ...
— Peter's Mother • Mrs. Henry De La Pasture

... Molly asks Philip, presently, in a low tone, when the buzz is at its highest; "very old, I mean? She looks so babyish." ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton

... bottom of her heart. She despised us still. And I would have staked my last dollar, or, better, my hopes of escaping from Farallone, that as man and wife she and the groom would never live together again. I felt terribly sorry for the groom. He had, as had I, been utterly inefficient, helpless, babyish, and cowardly—yet the odds against us had seemed overwhelming. But now as we journeyed down the river, and the distance between us and Farallone grew more, I kept thinking of men whom I had known; men physically weaker than the ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris

... A babyish face with puffy eyelids, and cheek-bones as lurid as if lozenge-shaped bits of crimson paper had been stuck on, comes out of the ground, opens one eye, then the other. It is Paradis. The skin of his fat ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse

... and he felt vaguely that the relationship demanded some affection from him. He had fancied that he was giving her affection, but he was doing nothing of the sort.... His childish troubles had been confided to servants. His babyish woes had been comforted by servants. What genuine love he had been able to give had been given to servants. She had not been the companion of his babyhood as his father had failed to be the companion of his youth. ... So far as the finer, ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland

... are two Indictments against him, Sir John." Whereupon they looked at me no more, save with a Stern and Sorrowful Gravity; and the Hope I had nourished for a moment departed from me. Yet then, as afterwards, and as now, I found (although then too babyish to reason about it), that, bad as we say the World is, it is difficult to come upon Three Men together in it but that one is ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala

... Alphonso!' This proceeding fortunately made a lawsuit unnecessary, and if the castle was ruined at once, it is not quite impossible that the same result might have been attained more slowly by litigation. The whole machinery strikes us as simply babyish, unless we charitably assume the whole to be intentionally burlesque. The intention is pretty evident in the solemn scene in the chapel, which closes thus:—'As he spake these words, three drops of blood fell from the nose of Alphonso's statue' (Alphonso is the spectre in armour). 'Manfred ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen

... then he began circling the room with pent up rage. He dashed into his study and out again, he threw the chairs about with increasing irritation, then giving up the search, he started hatless toward the hallway. It was then that a soft babyish ...
— Baby Mine • Margaret Mayo

... out a few things I am capable of believing, but which everybody else knows to be fallacies, and compares me to Sir I. Newton writing on the prophets! Yet of course he praises my biology up to the skies—there I am wise—everywhere else I am a kind of weak, babyish idiot! It is ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant

... supposed to have been a wicked man. He himself aspired to be nothing less. But he was everything less. He was a great, greedy, selfish, swaggering, magnanimous infant! Oscar Wilde is generally regarded as something short of "the just man made perfect," but his simple, babyish passion for touching pretty things, toying with pretty people, wearing pretty clothes, and drinking absinthe, is far too naive a thing to be, at bottom, evil. No really wicked person could have written "The Importance ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys

... wordly wisdom in the babyish face was at once so comical and so reassuring that irresistibly Max laughed too; and at the laugh, the little Jacqueline dropped to her knees beside the dressing-table and looked up, ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston

... sister agreed. 'I think they're very nice. But they're rather babyish; you see they've always lived at home, and never had to depend on themselves at all. I think they're ...
— Robin Redbreast - A Story for Girls • Mary Louisa Molesworth

... will be a trifle dull without you; and, of course, a young creature like you must feel it, too." And with that he took my hands, awkwardly enough, and began warming them in his own, for they were blue with cold. If Aunt Agatha had only seen him doing it, and me, with the babyish ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII: No. 356, October 23, 1886. • Various

... door, where stood Mrs. Tod and the baby. It stretched out its little arms to come to her, with that pretty, babyish gesture which I suppose no woman can resist. Miss March could not. She stopped, and began tossing ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik

... that struck me, I heard myself bawl—right out, "Oh, Aunty May—COME! Oh, Aunty May!" and then I was really frightened, for it sounded so loud, and so scared, and so babyish. ...
— W. A. G.'s Tale • Margaret Turnbull

... Stubb, eyeing the velvet vest and the watch and seals, "you may as well begin by telling him that he looks a sort of babyish to me, though I don't ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville

... wayward little creek Round thy home at hide-and-seek— As I see and hear it, still Romping round the wooded hill, Till its laugh-and-babble blends With the silence while it sends Glances back to kiss the sight, In its babyish delight, Ere it strays amid the gloom Of the glens that burst in bloom Of the rarest rhyme for thee, Donn ...
— Green Fields and Running Brooks, and Other Poems • James Whitcomb Riley

... for Tritton and Dusautoy would never have ventured so far, could they have imagined the possibility of such terms as those on which he lived with his parents. They attacked the poor child on the score of his manly aspirations, telling him it was babyish to tell mamma and sisters everything, a practice fit for girls, not for boys or men. These assurances extracted a pledge of secrecy, which was kept as long as his mother was absent, and only rendered ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge

... out in front of a long facade of a somewhat severe building, and a little careless man in a shooting jacket and knickerbockers ran down the steps. He had a weak, fair moustache and dull, blue, babyish eyes; his features were insignificant, but his manner extremely pleasant and hospitable, This was the Duke of Aylesbury, perhaps the largest landowner in Europe, and known only as a horsebreeder until he began to write abrupt little letters about ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton

... on him he was fast asleep, a rosy flush on his babyish, tearstained cheek, his red lips half parted, his curly head pillowed on his arm, and close against his soft, young throat there nestled the left hind foot ...
— Miss Minerva and William Green Hill • Frances Boyd Calhoun

... a wisp of a woman, with a pale, pretty face, uncertainly-colored, long-lashed grayish eyes, and great masses of dull, soft, silky brown hair. She had delicate aquiline features and a small, babyish red mouth. She looked as if a breath would sway her. The truth was that a tornado would hardly have caused her to swerve an inch from ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... following immediately upon the recognition of independence, Americans had not the slightest reason to complain. They had insisted upon being independent, and it would be babyish to fret about the consequences, when unpalatable. It was unpleasant to find that Great Britain, satisfied that the carrying trade was the first of her interests, upon which depended her naval supremacy, rigorously excluded ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan

... that I am sorry to see many boys doing every spring, and which they cannot defend by any such excuses. I often wonder who was the first to begin such a disgraceful custom, the most cruel, senseless, and babyish piece of folly: I mean what is called bird-nesting. God said to the creatures, "Be fruitful and multiply,"—"let fowl multiply in the earth." At the same time, He gave them a wonderful instinct and skill, such ...
— Kindness to Animals - Or, The Sin of Cruelty Exposed and Rebuked • Charlotte Elizabeth

... "You're not babyish, dear; it's right and womanly to feel grief at losing Gladys; but since it has to be, I want you to conquer that grief, and not let it ...
— Marjorie's New Friend • Carolyn Wells

... very good reader and at first, Jack kept her busy in this respect. But she wanted to hear about lions and tigers and men killing them and Indian fights and matters that didn't please the little girl at all. Mother Goose was babyish. ...
— A Modern Cinderella • Amanda M. Douglas

... against it: I said to the peasants, 'For you it is easy, 330 But how about me? Whatever may happen The Elder must come To accounts with the Barin, And how can I answer His babyish questions? And how can I ...
— Who Can Be Happy And Free In Russia? • Nicholas Nekrassov

... is," she says, going up to Adolphe, and talking the babyish, caressing language of ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Second Part • Honore de Balzac

... sleeves, and very cool and sweet Patty looked in it. Her gold curls were piled high on her head, and kept there by a twist of pink ribbon. She wore no jewelry, and the simple attire was very becoming to the soft, babyish curves of her ...
— Patty's Butterfly Days • Carolyn Wells

... Lee had seen Duchesses as vulgar. She knew more about the practical working of government than Mrs. Lee could ever expect or hope to know. Why then draw back from this interesting lobbyist with such babyish repulsion? ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams

... Clifford is put into the mouth of an ancient minstrel of the family; and in composing it, the author was led, therefore, almost irresistibly to adopt the manner and phraseology that is understood to be connected with that sort of composition, and to throw aside his own babyish incidents and fantastical sensibilities. How he has succeeded, the reader will be able to judge from the ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney

... Mick, once when he was in a good humour—and taught to dance like fairies. For Tim's words had explained to them the meaning of these fine promises, and, though they said nothing, the little pair were far less babyish and foolish in some ways than the gipsies, who judged them by their delicate appearance and small stature, had any idea of. But still they were very young, and there is no telling how soon they would have begun to get accustomed to their strange life,—how ...
— "Us" - An Old Fashioned Story • Mary Louisa S. Molesworth

... immediately liked and speedily loved by Brinnaria. Meffia, a month older than herself and looking six years younger, was a small, awkward, ungainly girl, with pale blue eyes, pale yellow hair and babyish pink complexion. She had never had an ill hour in her life, yet she always appeared ailing, shrank from any effort, hated exercise and exertion and at every necessity for movement asserted that she was tired, ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White

... to cry, by way of getting out of the scrape; but having begun as a counsellor and peacemaker, it would never do to be babyish; and on his repeating the question, she said, in a tone which she could not prevent from being lachrymose, 'You make Guy almost angry, you tease him, and when people praise him, you answer as if it would not last! And it ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge

... generous rather in tolerance, in power, and in laughter. All the health and buoyancy of her was in her mouth, as well as in her eyes. She rarely exposed her teeth in smiling, for which purpose she seemed chiefly to employ her eyes; but when she laughed she showed strong white teeth, even, not babyish in their smallness, but just the firm, sensible, normal size one would expect in a woman as ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London

... long in getting the soap and water ready, which she carried off to the school-room; and though Herbert at first called it a babyish game, and stood apart by the window watching the rain, he could not help joining ...
— Carry's Rose - or, the Magic of Kindness. A Tale for the Young • Mrs. George Cupples

... member," who had walked his fifty-two times, laid by the heels in his solitary upper chamber! His big, old, gnarled hands shook as they rested on the sill, his underlip trembled and drooped like a child's, babyish tears gathered ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)

... down upon always had amused Kara and herself. She was so unlike any of them. Her light hair was almost as short as a boy's and was boyish in appearance, save that it curled in an almost babyish fashion. Her eyes were wide open and a light china blue. Here her doll-like attributes ended. She had a short, determined nose, a square chin, and a large mouth filled with ...
— The Girl Scouts in Beechwood Forest • Margaret Vandercook

... on purpose or not, the next Sunday was eminently unsuccessful; the Collects were imperfect, the answers in the Catechism recurred to disused babyish blunders; Fergus twisted himself into preternatural attitudes, and Valetta teased the Sofy to scratching point, they yawned ferociously at The Birthday, and would not be interested even in the pony's death. Then when they went out walking, they would not hear ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge

... scratching out inasmuch, I should have said nevertheless. When I am not quite sure of a word, I look it out, for I always have my little dictionary close at hand, and that is a great conveyance, you know. I am trying to get over my babyish way of talking, or at least of writing, ...
— Harper's Young People, August 10, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... with him in harmony. Then she reached out her hand with a gesture that claimed a sympathetic examination of the purchase. Festus Clasby hesitated, looking into the eyes of the woman. Was she to be trusted? Her eyes were clear, grey, and open, almost babyish in their rounded innocence. Festus Clasby handed her the tin can, and she examined ...
— Waysiders • Seumas O'Kelly

... but one of the little Beresfords, and she was six years old when the baby came, so she was quite a responsible person and ready to be a great help to nurse. Her round face and form assumed airs of dignity, and she strove valiantly to put away all babyish weaknesses as things ...
— Our Frank - and other stories • Amy Walton

... he asked, purely from habit. I was regarding the shoes with interest. Never have I known anything so ludicrous as the contrast between my stupendous number tens and the dainty pumps that seemed almost babyish beside them. ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon

... for the young people, but for the little Belgravians to come; and if these are the necessaries of life (and they are with many honest people), to talk of any other arrangement is an absurdity: of love in lodgings—a babyish folly of affection: that can't pay coach-hire or afford a decent milliner—as mere wicked balderdash and childish romance. If on the other hand your opinion is that people, not with an assured subsistence, but with a fair chance to obtain it, and with the stimulus ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray

... are any ghosts around here I wish one of 'em would pick you up in a sheet, take you away and drop you in your own home in Gridley," declared Tom, becoming decidedly irritated by this babyish ...
— The Grammar School Boys Snowbound - or, Dick & Co. at Winter Sports • H. Irving Hancock

... poaching cat! And again she moved forward. But she had lost direction. 'I'm going round and round,' she thought. 'They always do.' And the sinking scattered feeling of the "bushed" clutched at her again. 'Shall I call?' she thought. 'I must be near the road. But it's so babyish.' She moved on again. Her foot struck something soft. A voice muttered a thick oath; a hand seized her ankle. She leaped, and dragged and wrenched it free; and, utterly unnerved, she screamed, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... could have; but now, when she saw Fanny's pink silk, with a white tarlatan tunic, and innumerable puffings, bows, and streamers, her own simple little toilet lost all its charms in her eyes, and looked very babyish and old-fashioned. ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various

... his little, round, girlish face is pale and void of expression; he squints as if he were near-sighted, although his eyes are good, and his voice is soft and babyish. ...
— Shallow Soil • Knut Hamsun

... of Alabama, recently said: "But it is a weak cry when the white man asks odds on intelligence over the Negro. When nature has already so handicapped the African in the race for knowledge, the cry of the boasted Anglo-Saxon for still further odds seems babyish. What wonder that the world looks on in surprise, if not disgust? It cannot help but say, If our contention be true that the Negro is an inferior race, then the odds ought to be on the other side, if any are to be given. And why ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various

... his remarks, the Arab gave a last shake of his dingy finger monkeywards, salaamed low to the party, then shouldering his burden stalked on once more, the little captive looking after him for a minute, and then wrinkling up his mummy visage to give a weak, babyish cry. ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry

... Michelangelo's master, I shall speak in the chapter on S. Maria Novella. This picture, which represents the Adoration of the Shepherds, was painted in 1485, when the artist was thirty-six. It is essentially pleasant: a religious picture on the sunny side. The Child is the soul of babyish content, equally amused with its thumb and the homage it is receiving. Close by is a goldfinch unafraid; in the distance is a citied valley, with a river winding in it; and down a neighbouring hill, on the top of which the shepherds feed their flocks, comes the imposing procession of the ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas

... on storming at Prissy, who began to cry, and looked so weak and babyish that I was frightened she would betray ...
— Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... marked while he mouthed earnest nothings with Laetitia! There was an odd, nice smell about him, of peat, of tobacco, of soap, of heather with the wind across it, of things like that most agreeably mixed, and actually she had heard Laetitia say to him in the babyish way she spoke to him, "You smoke too much. You do." And he, like a moon calf: "Oh, you're not going to ask me to give up smoking, are you?" And she with a trailing eye and hint of a blush, "Perhaps I shall—some day." And he—a sigh! Positively a love-sick sigh straight out of a novel! Ah, positively ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson

... because he could not handle people successfully, or because he lacked the courage to face the constant reiteration of complaints and suffering by his patients. Sick people are selfish, peevish, whimsical, and babyish. It takes tact, patience, understanding, and good nature to handle ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb

... the youngest member of a naval officer's family, that like the D——-s had been bound up in friendship with ours for more than a century. As she was two or three years younger than I, I had at first taken but little notice of her—probably I thought her too babyish. ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti

... would have said, "shut up." She could not bear it to be thought that she was babyish or "silly." Her great, great wish was to be considered quite a big girl. You could get her to do anything by telling her it would be babyish not to do it, or that doing it would be like big people, which, of course, showed that she was rather babyish in reality, ...
— The Adventures of Herr Baby • Mrs. Molesworth

... better," she said. "I feel babyish. I should like a good square cry. But I won't have one. Don't be afraid. The motto is 'No snivelling, full steam ahead.'—But as to the stage, I'm not sure that won't prove the solution of most difficulties in ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet

... if all dinners were as wearisome as this. Rollins finally followed Trennahan's example and devoted himself to Caro Folsom, a yellow-haired girl with babyish green eyes, a lisp, and an astute brain. On Magdalena's left was a blond and babbling youth named Ellis, who made no secret of the fact that he was afraid of his intellectual neighbour; he stammered and blushed every time she ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

... drawing room in St. Petersburg. There was one rather good sentence in it about our liberated serf, who was to march over the face of the fatherland bearing a torch in his hand. You should have seen our dear Alexai Ivanovitch, blowing out his cheeks and blinking his little eyes, pronounce in his babyish voice, 'T-torch! t-torch! Will march with a t-torch!' Well, the emancipation is now an established fact, but where is the peasant ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev

... pillow, and looked towards where she lay, with staring, haunted eyes. The window was open a little way at the top, and for fear of the night-chill his fine leopard-skin kaross had been spread over her.... One dimpled, rounded, bare arm lay upon the soft dappled fur, the babyish fingers curled one upon the other. Rosy human tendrils that should never twine again in a mother's hair. Her child, her daughter!... Born of her body, sharing her nature and her sex, soon to be orphaned. For he who could not even lift himself ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves

... the creek and turned up a deep ravine, which he followed until he came to a dip, or plateau-like plain, halfway up a broad slope. Here he found a rock on the sunny side of a grassy knoll, and stopped. It may be that little Muskwa's babyish friendship, the caress of his soft little red tongue at just the psychological moment, and his perseverance in following Thor had all combined to touch a responsive chord in the other's big brute heart, for after ...
— The Grizzly King • James Oliver Curwood

... attraction of blood in a case which has been reported to me of a youth of 17, the youngest of a large family who are all very strong and entirely normal. He is himself, however, delicate, overgrown, with a narrow chest, a small head, and babyish features, while mentally he is backward, with very defective memory and scant powers of assimilation. He is intensely nervous, peevish, and subject to fits of childish rage. He takes violent fancies to persons of his ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... 'Dreadfully babyish, isn't it?' said Urania, smiling with her superior air at Brian, who had helped himself to a crust of home-made bread, and a liberal supply ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon

... The babyish cry and its effect upon Gray Wolf taught Kazan his first lesson in fatherhood. Instinct again told him that Gray Wolf could not go down to the hunt with him now—that she must stay at the top of the Sun Rock. So when the moon rose he went down alone, and ...
— Kazan • James Oliver Curwood

... thought about it at all, but now it seemed a very babyish and helpless thing. She determined to dress herself in future. To change the subject she said, "Why don't you come down into the garden? I want to show you ...
— The Girl Scouts at Home - or Rosanna's Beautiful Day • Katherine Keene Galt

... playing nine-pins because Bobbie was so fond of them. She did not care for them herself, for she thought that as she was ten years old they were too babyish, but Bobbie was only eight, so of course it was not to be expected of him that he would care for ...
— Soap-Bubble Stories - For Children • Fanny Barry

... lay asleep in her father's arms. For old Mrs. Hawtry's "beloved granddaughter Cecelia Anne" was not yet too big to find solace in sleep when she was tired and uninterested, being indeed but nine years old and exceedingly small of stature and babyish of habit. So she slept on and missed hearing all the provisions which were meant to protect her in the enjoyment of her estate but which were equally calculated ...
— New Faces • Myra Kelly

... holland frock rumpled and not too clean, and her really beautiful gray eyes looked over-anxious. Marjorie's whole little face at that moment had a curious careworn look, out of keeping with its round and somewhat babyish form. ...
— The Children of Wilton Chase • Mrs. L. T. Meade

... wished to free me from childhood's failings, and even withdraw me from its innocent pleasures. On this occasion, instead of indulging me as he generally did, Papa seemed vexed, and on my way upstairs I heard him say: "Really all this is too babyish for a big girl like Therese, and I hope it is the last year it will happen." His words cut me to the quick. Celine, knowing how sensitive I was, whispered: "Don't go downstairs just yet—wait a little, you would cry too much if you looked at your presents ...
— The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux • Therese Martin (of Lisieux)

... him; he needed her. Since that day when she had offered him friendship and help, he had been depending on her more and more, a big man like a neglected baby. She had strenuously fixed her mind on the babyish side of him, but all the time her senses had been attracted by the man, and now, by the mere physical experience of the force of his arms, she could never see him as a child again. She clung to the idea of helping him, to the thought ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG

... prince, that's not the way,' lisped a fair- haired young officer with red eyes, a tiny nose, and a babyish, sleepy face. 'You shouldn't play like that ... you ought ... ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Works of Ivan Turgenev, Vol. I • Ivan Turgenev

... a little girl, oh, a fair little creature, with fluffy, golden hair shading her babyish face, who was on her knees beside a white ...
— Lord Dolphin • Harriet A. Cheever

... the edge of the group which had closed in about the three arrivals, Marjorie's searching eyes spied a small, flaxen-haired young woman with wide-opened blue eyes and a babyish expression, coming toward her. The latter was burdened with a heavy seal traveling case and a bag of golf sticks. She had evidently emerged from the coach behind the one from which Nella and her two ...
— Marjorie Dean, College Sophomore • Pauline Lester

... pink, her wide hazel eyes deepen and glow, her little face light up with elfish mirth, and her round, childish figure poise itself in some coquettish attitude. Then she had such absurd little hands, with short fingers and babyish dimples, such tiny feet, and such a wealth of crinkled dark-brown hair—such bewitching little helpless ways, too, a fashion of throwing herself appealingly on your compassion which no man on earth could resist! At bottom she was a self-reliant, independent little soul, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various



Words linked to "Babyish" :   immature



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