What's the difference between childish and fatuous?

Childish


Definition:

  • (a.) Of, pertaining to, befitting, or resembling, a child.
  • (a.) Puerile; trifling; weak.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Fundamental differences between childish and schizophrenic ways of interpreting the world will be presented, showing the specificity of cognitive representation in schizophrenic thinking.
  • (2) The childish vulnerability she brings out in Sara balances out the visual bleakness of the film.
  • (3) [De Boer-Buquicchio] meant sexualised depictions of childish looking characters in manga and anime.
  • (4) "Hopefully, the lesson is to stop this foolish childishness," McCain said Thursday on CNN.
  • (5) If that sounded childish, Waugh's writing was valued by good judges.
  • (6) Against my will I had to keep watching those two black companions who persistently marked out our movements ahead of us, like walking silhouettes, and it gave me – our feelings are sometimes so childish – a certain reassurance to see that my shadow was longer, slimmer, I almost said "better-looking", than the short, stout shadow of my companion.
  • (7) A letter in which Albert Einstein branded religious beliefs as "childish superstitions" and the "product of human weaknesses" has been sold at auction in London for £170,000 to a private collector, smashing the world record for a letter by the great scientist.
  • (8) It was fairly childish, but it made me laugh.” Attenborough also talks about the dangers of climate change ahead of a new documentary to be shown over the festive period, 60 years after he first scuba dived the Great Barrier Reef in 1957.
  • (9) And it's important to understand the difference between being childlike and being childish.
  • (10) "Or like a small dog barking — it's so childish."
  • (11) (Though my childish understanding, informed by the culture I lived in, led me to believe that "cousin" was the operative problem there.)
  • (12) Mollie Whitworth North Walsham, Norfolk • What an impressive change the House of Lords debate on tax credit regulations made to the usual childish Punch and Judy politics of the other house.
  • (13) Once in charge, they believe they are done with such childish things, and can’t conceive of circumstances in which they will be judged – especially when convinced of their own rectitude.
  • (14) It is a mark of a life unlived, of a childish world view retained.
  • (15) This campaign is nothing but a self-interested and cynical ploy by the newspaper, a childish way of hitting back at the growing chorus of anti-Page 3 voices .
  • (16) What sense would there have been sealing up the Da Vinci, unless you get into childish Dan Brown logic?"
  • (17) The sale will be watched carefully because a letter in which he branded religious beliefs as "childish superstitions" and the "product of human weaknesses" that went on sale in May smashed the record for an Einstein letter by fetching £170,000.
  • (18) This was “childish back and forth”, charged New Jersey governor Chris Christie .
  • (19) It's a rare interlude of childish exuberance for girls whose young lives are dominated by the twice daily walk to the well and home, carrying heavy water cans, and other domestic chores.
  • (20) Those who don't suffer from them find them mystifying; childish, even.

Fatuous


Definition:

  • (a.) Feeble in mind; weak; silly; stupid; foolish; fatuitous.
  • (a.) Without reality; illusory, like the ignis fatuus.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) There certainly has been a danger that the dispute could be diverted into a chauvinistic blind alley, not least because of the cue given by Brown's cynical and fatuous use of the British National Party's slogan "British jobs for British workers", which was then thrown back in his face by the strikers.
  • (2) So far, the president has been more fatuous than fascistic, though he belatedly realized what an albatross the bill had become.
  • (3) Yet such is Britain's fatuously entitled "war on drugs".
  • (4) First, Brazil did not have any penalty appeals against Mexico , so the media’s thick-headed behaviour could not have triggered the inevitable payback on this occasion, rendering Scolari’s complaint somewhat fatuous, at least in terms of what had just happened.
  • (5) But likewise, insisting on economic deprivation, as though that is the sole context and alone explains their motivations, is only marginally less fatuous.
  • (6) It's not quite believable that height is unimportant to Sellar, although he's right that it's fatuous to chase superlatives, given that the Shard does not quite equal the 82-year-old Chrysler building in New York.
  • (7) Iran's religious minorities are arrested on fatuous charges, endure trials that violate the state's own due process, are jailed on unproven convictions and tortured in prison.
  • (8) Even if you think the Twitter storms about political “misspeaks” and “gaffes” are fatuous, consider what you did not hear after the PM’s outburst last week.
  • (9) This involves tight prioritisation – allowing yourself a certain amount of time per task – and trying not to get caught up in less productive activities, such as unstructured meetings that tend to take up lots of time.” We’ve all been there, wishing we weren’t stuck in the same room as a bunch of fatuous blowhards – or, as Michael Foley puts it in his superb book The Age of Absurdity , “the colleagues who speak at length in every meeting, in loud confident tones that suggest critical independence, but never deviate from the official line”.
  • (10) In addition, these studies also risk annoying the project's youngsters by asking them questions they perceive to be intrusive or fatuous.
  • (11) The prize in his view, though, is "not about who's the best: I think that's fatuous".
  • (12) When Phillips first spoke of sleepwalking 10 years ago , even David Miliband tut-tutted, calling his concerns “fatuous”.
  • (13) In this respect, the idea of "saving for the nation" is fatuous, jingoistic nonsense.
  • (14) ■ "Wittering inanity", "Fatuous", "Pass the jubilee sickbag".
  • (15) Shaun Spiers Chief executive, Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) • The government’s plans to build 13,000 houses for sale at just 20% off ludicrous market values is a fatuous response to the biggest housing crisis since the second world war.
  • (16) All the money and clothes and fatuous conversation have driven Bateman mad, we might think.
  • (17) "Let us quit this indecent exercise of fatuous plaints, including raising hopes, even now, with talk of 'posthumous' conferment, when you know damned well that the Nobel committee does not indulge in such tradition.
  • (18) Not a Brexit conspiracy, but assuredly an inspiration for Boris Johnson’s fatuous and burbling battle cry of “ Independence day !” Now the Tory leadership campaign has begun and, incredibly, movie advertising is again playing its role.
  • (19) A failure to recognise this distinctiveness was well demonstrated in last year's fatuous talk about the Olympics' "growth dividend".
  • (20) In the decades that followed, Frost became a media personality and comedian, as comfortable cross-examining the most heavyweight political figures of the day as hosting Through the Keyhole, the show typifying the fatuousness of celebrity culture, in which panellists were given a video tour of a mystery famous guest's property and asked to identify the owner from the evidence.