What's the difference between childish and petty?

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.

Petty


Definition:

  • (superl.) Little; trifling; inconsiderable; also, inferior; subordinate; as, a petty fault; a petty prince.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) The only thing the media will talk about in the hours and days after the debate will be Trump’s refusal to say he will accept the results of the election, making him appear small, petty and conspiratorial.
  • (2) I realize it’s petty, but it’s like the Michael Bolton thing from Office Space.
  • (3) Winston Churchill, when he was offered the role of minister of the local government board in 1906, commented: "There is no place more laborious, more anxious, more thankless, more cloaked with petty and even squalid detail, more full of hopeless and insoluble difficulties."
  • (4) Let’s make sure it’s not on the usual plane of politics and point-scoring and pettiness that drifts away in the next news cycle.
  • (5) We took all the feedback from users and put pencil to paper to create our consumer 3D printer built for speed and ease of use,” said Pettis.
  • (6) Facebook Twitter Pinterest China dismisses Trump call with Taiwan as ‘small trick’ However, Beijing’s public response has so far been measured, with the foreign ministry lodging a “solemn representation” with Washington and the foreign minister, Wang Yi, downplaying the development as “a petty move” by Taiwan.
  • (7) She won’t apologize for whatever makes the New York Times treat her with middle-school levels of petty scorn .
  • (8) The president should have directed the Justice Department to stop taking stupid points and petty appeals.” One reason the Justice Department pursued the habeas cases so hard was its client: the Pentagon.
  • (9) As the locus of many migrants' investments, the village of Los Pinos has experienced a modest growth in the number of full-time jobs paying somewhat above the minimum urban wage and in a variety of petty entrepreneurial activities depending heavily on the patronage of migrant households, themselves heavily subsidized by remittances.
  • (10) Indeed watching the prime minister singling out unemployed youngsters for uniquely punitive measures while pretending it is for their own good, cheered on by a gang of braying chums, it looks less like the behaviour of a national statesman and more like the petty vindictiveness of a schoolyard bully.
  • (11) Some are retired, others straddle the uncertain worlds of petty trading, agriculture and seasonal migrant labour.
  • (12) Not long ago, the mecca of American tourism was populated by sex workers, transvestites, drug addicts and petty criminals, rather than middle-class tourists.
  • (13) All the petty differences that divide us seem to melt away.
  • (14) Abdeslam relied on a large network of friends and relatives that already existed for drug dealing and petty crime to keep him in hiding,” Belgium’s federal prosecutor, Frederic Van Leeuw, told Belgian public broadcaster RTBF.
  • (15) Another said: "The problem with PMQs isn't so much that it's shouty but that the so-called pinnacle of political debate in this country is two men trading petty insults and making nasty jokes about the other while the rest of parliament boos and cheers behind them.
  • (16) They included a former monk, two young men with learning disabilities, a handful of petty criminals and a teacher at a private school in Paris who was "disappeared" by another republican group, the INLA.
  • (17) The study was conducted in the three contiguous counties of Johnson, Lafayette and Pettis in west central Missouri.
  • (18) Edgar Mitchell, the Apollo 14 Lunar Module Pilot, said that walking on the Moon gives you an instant global consciousness, an intense dissatisfaction with the state of the world, and a compulsion to do something about it, that international politics look so petty.
  • (19) It also found that some children were put into care without lawful basis, including for petty theft and for being rude.
  • (20) Parents are required to bring up children responsibly, while living in a form of servitude to licensed employers and petty line managers, often themselves at risk of returning to zero-hours.