callow

Immature, inexperienced, or naive.

Adjective

  1. Immature, inexperienced, or naive.
    • Through both the volumes, there is not a single original sentiment, description, or incident, and yet a callow reader may peruse it without perceiving any thing is wanting. - 1764, A Society of GENTLEMEN, THE CRITICAL...
  2. having no hair; bald, bare, hairless.
    • Then there was a little Chinese in full azure costume, with long gesticulating arms, and large callow head, who pertinaciously threw in his squeaky plea for Confucius in the most unsyntactical French. - 1878, A[lfred]...
    • There was a sense abroad as he spoke that the world was rocking together to great music, and this callow-headed professor by the table had caught a note of it. - 1916 July 1, S. Macnaughton, “Some Elderly People and...
    • This time it held a callow-headed baby in a pink frock. - 1944, Chambers’s Journal of Popular Literature, Science and Art, London; Edinburgh: W. & R. Chambers […], →OCLC, page 225, column 1:
  3. Of a brick: unburnt.
  4. Of a young bird, or (part of) its body: having not developed feathers yet; featherless, unfledged; hence, of other animals or their bodies: having no fur or hair; furless, hairless, unfurred.
    • […] Calais and Zetes had no beard upon their chin, / They both were callow. But aſſone as haire did once begin / In likeneſſe of a yellow Downe upon their cheekes to ſprout, / Then (euen as comes to paſſe in Birdes) the...
    • [T]hey [who] be ſomevvhat ſlovv of apprehenſion and idle vvithall, are verie troubleſome unto their teachers, and importune them overmuch: […] reſembling herein young callovv birds vvhich are not yet fethered and...
    • A Snake of Size immenſe aſcends a Tree, / And in the leafie Summit, ſpy'd a Neſt, / VVhich o'er her Callovv Young, a Sparrovv preſs'd. - 1717, John Dryden, “Book XII. [The Trojan War.]”, in Ovid’s Metamorphoses in...

    1. (figurative) Lacking life experience; immature, inexperienced, naive; also, of or relating to something immature or inexperienced.

      • Those three young men are particularly callow youths.
      • Try to remember the kind of September / When you were a tender and callow fellow / Try to remember and if you remember / Then follow - 1960, “Try to Remember”, in Tom Jones (lyrics), Harvey Schmidt (music), The...
      • Bernard, there are only 630 MPs, if one party has just over 300 MPs it forms a government—of that 300, 100 are too old and too silly, 100 are too young and too callow, which leaves just about a hundred MPs to fill 100...

      Synonyms: green wet behind the ears artless callow childlike verdant clueless credulous dewy-eyed cute fleeceable foppotee guileless ingenuous innocent jejune Panglossian Panglossic quaint simple simple-hearted simple-minded starry-eyed unaffected

      Antonyms: experienced adultish grown up mature

  5. In the life cycle of an animal: newly born or hatched; juvenile.
    • a callow bee
  6. Synonym of teneral (“of certain insects or other arthropods such as spiders: lacking colour or firmness just after ecdysis (“shedding of the exoskeleton”)”).

    Synonyms: teneral

  7. Of land: having no vegetation; bare.
    • [T]heſe Lands are not ſvvardy enough to bear clean tillage, nor callovv or light enough to lie to get ſvvard, […] - 1677, Rob[ert] Plot, “Of Arts”, in The Natural History of Oxford-shire, Being an Essay toward the...

Origin

From Middle English calwe (“(adjective) bald; (noun) bald person”), from Old English calu, caluw (“without hair, bald, callow”), from Proto-West Germanic *kalu, from Proto-Germanic *kalwaz (“bald; bare, naked”), and then either: * from Proto-Indo-European *gol(H)-wo- (“bald; bare, naked”), from *gelH- (“head; naked”); or * from Latin calvus (“bald”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *kl̥H- (“bald; naked”). If not borrowed from Latin, Grimm’s law indicates that the Latin word is likely a false cognate, along with Persian کل (kal) and Sanskrit कुल्व (kulvá). cognates * Dutch kaal (“bald”) * German kahl (“bald”) * German Low German kahl (“bald”) * Russian го́лый (gólyj, “bare, naked, nude”) * Swedish kal, kalka (“bald”) * West Frisian keal (“bald”)

Forms

callower more callow callowest most callow

Derived

callowly callowness callowy encallow encallowing uncallow

Adjective Ireland

  1. Of land: low-lying and near a river, and thus regularly submerged.
    • The Bogs that extend along the western part of this District do not lie close to the Shannon, as those on the east side do along the banks of the Inny; they are separated from the river by a long tract of high, dry,...

Origin

From Irish caladh (“meadow by a riverbank”), from Old Irish calad (“shore, landing, port”), probably a noun use of calad (“hard”, adjective), from Proto-Celtic *kaletos (“cruel; hard; strong”), possibly from Proto-Indo-European *ḱlH-eto- (“cold”) (in the sense of something frozen and thus hard), from an unclear root *ḱl(H)- or *kl(H)- (“hard”); or related to Proto-Germanic *halluz (“boulder, rock, stone”), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)kel- (“to cut, hew”).

Forms

more callow most callow

Noun biology, entomology

  1. Synonym of teneral (“an insect or other arthropod such as a spider which has just undergone ecdysis (“shedding of the exoskeleton”) and so lacks colour or firmness”).

    Synonyms: teneral

  2. An alluvial flat.
  3. The upper layer of rubble in a quarry which has to be removed to reach the material to be mined.
  4. A young bird which has not developed feathers yet; a nestling.

    1. (figurative) A person lacking life experience; an immature or naive person.

  5. Synonym of topsoil (“upper layer of soil”).

    Synonyms: topsoil

Forms

callows

Noun Ireland

  1. A low-lying meadow near a river which is regularly submerged.
    • Near-synonyms: bog, fen, marsh, swamp, mire, moor, slough
    • The crops of hay carried off by the floods, or rendered utterly valueless, were not the only losses sustained by the landholders. The extensive callows upon which they grazed their cattle during the autumn and early...

    Synonyms: flood meadow water meadow bog fen marsh swamp mire moor slough

Forms

callows