Literary notes about Callow (AI summary)
Writers use "callow" to evoke a sense of youthful inexperience or undeveloped character, whether referring to people or to nature. It is often employed to describe a naïve or immature individual, as when a capable oration contrasts sharply with the expected ineptitude of a callow youth [1][2]. At the same time, the term lends itself to vivid, natural imagery—conjuring delicate scenes of fledgling birds or tender nestlings, whose soft down and untested abilities symbolize the early stages of life [3][4]. In other contexts, "callow" highlights the gap between unseasoned ignorance and the wisdom that comes with hard experience, imbuing the narrative with both a sense of fragility and a nod to inevitable growth [5].
- Instead of the callow youth, such as they usually dealt with, they found a practised speaker who defended his points with grace and confidence.
— from Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists by Elbert Hubbard - I was no schoolboy, or callow youth, to be trifled with in this manner.
— from A Maid of the Kentucky Hills by Edwin Carlile Litsey - It was plain that the callow nestling was able to distinguish this morsel from the palatable diet it had been accustomed to.
— from Our Bird Comrades by Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser - Old Mother Duck has hatched a brood Of ducklings, small and callow: Their little wings are short, their down Is mottled grey and yellow.
— from Mother Goose's Nursery Rhymes - His callow ignorance—he had not even had the advantage of the war, like nearly everybody else!—made him small in his own eyes.
— from To Let by John Galsworthy
