man-child
Americannoun
-
men-children
plural
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of man-child
Middle English word dating back to 1350–1400
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Gillis, 38, plays Shane, a man-child mechanic at Valley Forge Automotive Center.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 14, 2026
His death set off waves of grief among generations of "Friends" fans who loved him as the sarcastic man-child Chandler Bing.
From Barron's ● May 13, 2026
Gannon-Doak is Scotland's flying machine, the man-child who was supposed to scare the wits out of the Greeks with his speed and his daring, and electrify Hampden with his personality.
From BBC ● Oct. 9, 2025
So many fit the man-child: “light of brain,” “clod of wayward marl,” “bolting-hutch of beastliness,” but specifically to his inability to speak the truth there’s the perfect “infinite and endless liar, an hourly promise-breaker.”
From Salon ● Feb. 5, 2024
I wanted to be a baby, but instead, I was an adult who talked like one, a spooky man-child demanding more than his fair share of attention.
From "Me Talk Pretty One Day" by David Sedaris
In keeping with the vision of a “postmenopausal” Macbeth, they did change a line Macbeth speaks to his wife: “Bring forth men-children only/For thy undaunted mettle should compose/Nothing but male.”
From New York Times ● Dec. 4, 2021
The forty-year-old actor, who grew up in Virginia, is known for his gallery of overconfident Southern men-children.
From The New Yorker ● May 29, 2017
Now, old fans and new can watch it in all its insane glory, and get to experience the same crushing disappointment and bemusement that kids and men-children across the US did in 1978.
From The Guardian ● Dec. 1, 2015
Once young Barry gets more involved with the brothers, "you realize it is about these three men-children forming this new dysfunctional family unit."
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 3, 2015
The wife, therefore, who would wish, as Macbeth desired of his, to 'Bring forth men-children only,' should avoid exposing herself to conception during the early part of the time between her menstrual periods.
From The Physical Life of Woman: Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother by George H. (George Henry) Napheys
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
