Word: childishness
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...spite of overwhelming Radcliffe approval of Harvard men, fewer than 10 percent "go steady" with them or anyone else. "I don't approve of that term," said a representative 'Cliffe sophomore. "It sounds childish." A sixth of the Annex population, nevertheless, has gone steady at some time during the past year, although one box on the questionnaire, marking two or more "steadies" in that time span, remained unchecked in all but one case...
Maurois seems to think it did. He maintains that sickness "increases the power of analysis" and that Proust's neurotic throwbacks to childish ways were part & parcel of his genius ("To remain a child is to become a poet"). Such a relating of art to neurosis, quite fashionable these days, is only half true and is dangerous on two counts: it confirms the scoffer's prejudice that all artists are nuts anyway, and it caters to the illusion of the idle bohemian who thinks that because he is neurotic he is also talented...
...military college; righteously indignant in one breath and droolingly prurient the next, it read like the notes of a small-town peeper on the broom closet of hell. Some critics went part way with Farrell's estimate of Willingham, but others rebuked the book as a discharge of childish hostility by a very young man. But when the book was twice taken to court for obscenity (and twice acquitted), readers caught the scent. End as a Man sold some 35,000 copies...