Sunday Rest: kidult. Word Not To Use Today.

Peter Pan, Kensington Gardens, London: photo by Tony Hisgett

A trend for adults neglecting to take on grown-up responsibilities and tastes is nothing new: one could perhaps argue that Tybalt was a kidult, if only for the fun of writing the shortest rhyming Shakespearean essay of all time...

...not that I should imagine there's that much competition... 

...anyway. Such a person as a kidult is also known, I'm afraid, by various other revolting terms such as rejuvenile and adulescent (and the much less disgusting Peter Pan). 

The idea of the grown-up child has been seized upon by the sellers films and toys: think how much fun you had when you were a kid! they say. Why not play with a toy a hundred times cooler than anything you had then, like a remote-controlled plane?

There is, obviously, nothing wrong with an adult playing with toys. The trouble comes with the idea that an adult who plays with toys is no longer an adult.

That, apart from simple aesthetics, is the reason why this word should be destroyed - if necessary by an really enormous drone that fires real, like, paper bullets.

Word Not To Use Today: kidult. This word was coined in the 1960s.