a. (UN-1 7 c.)
1664. Baxter, Divine Life, II. vii. 277. Is it not some unchildlike carriage? the guilt of some disobedience or contempt that hath first caused this?
[1775. Ash, Unchildlike..., unlike a child, unbecoming a child.]
1818. J. Milligan, Plea Inf. Bapt., VI. 225. They [parents] will have, by this means, an opportunity of seeing a miniature representation of their own unchildlike disposition and undutiful conduct.
1835. H. F. Chorley, A Sorrowful Story, in New Year’s Gift, 124. The unfortunate little thief was now as doggedly still as he had struggled all the way, and the Justice thought he had never beheld a more hardened unchild-like countenance.
1840. Dickens, Barn. Rudge, xxv., in Master Humphrey’s Clock (1841), III. 74. The little stratagems she had devised to try him, the little tokens he had given in his childish way—not of dullness but of something infinitely worse, so ghastly and unchild-like in its cunning—came back as vividly as if but yesterday had intervened.
1879. Miss Bird, Rocky Mts., 53. The family consists of a grown-up son, a shiftless, melancholy-looking youth, who possibly pines for a wider life; a girl of sixteen, a sour, repellent-looking creature, with as much manners as a pig; and three hard, unchildlike younger children.
1887. Sarah Doudney, Prudence Winterburn, ii. 24. They were unchildlike eyes he thought, vaguely, as he kissed her. Ibid., vi. 87. She felt uncomfortably conscious of being studied and criticised in a most unchildlike fashion. Ibid., viii. 125. Here heart was full of unchildlike cares and anxieties.
1904[?]. Mabel Nelson Thurston, The Box from St. Mark’s, 4. The children were growing thin, with languid, unchildlike ways.
