a. [f. BOY sb.1 + -ISH1.]
1. Of or pertaining to boys or boyhood.
1548. Udall, Erasm. Par. Luke iii. (R.). Big laddes … grou quite awaye from the pureness of babehood to boyish wantonnesse.
1604. Shaks., Oth., I. iii. 132. Euen from my boyish daies.
1761. Sterne, Tr. Shandy, III. lxxv. From the first hours of our boyish pastimes.
1873. Symonds, Grk. Poets, vi. 164. In the bloom of manly or of boyish strength.
2. Boy-like; puerile.
1579. Fulke, Heskins’ Parl., 60. This is such a boyish sophisme as I am ashamed to aunswere it.
1663. Cowley, Verses & Ess. (1669), 143. The beginning of it is Boyish, but of this part … I should hardly now be much ashamed.
1848. Macaulay, Hist. Eng., II. 195. Boyish vanities, and no part of the real business of life.
