man-child
Americannoun
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:
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
Like him, they’re also racing from man-child parts to man-man ones.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 30, 2025
More chart-toppers followed — including “Dibs,” whose title provided her dog’s name, and “Peter Pan,” about the danger of falling for a charming man-child — as did a Grammy nomination for best new artist.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 28, 2024
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
Acquaintances remember him as a socially awkward man-child with an outrageous sense of humor and a squirrelly, almost manic-depressive personality.
From "Into the Wild" by Jon Krakauer
“Bring forth men-children only,” he tells her, kneeling before her and placing the side of his head on her womb, almost as if he might wish to return to such motherly safety.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 1, 2024
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
They had grand women in old Rome, Sir,—and the women bore such men-children as never the world saw before.
From The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 04, No. 21, July, 1859 by Various
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.
