"puer aeternus" meaning in English

See puer aeternus in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

Forms: pueri aeterni [plural]
Etymology: From Latin puer aeternus (“eternal boy”) (in Ovid, Metamorphoses), after use in German by Carl Jung. Etymology templates: {{root|en|ine-pro|*peh₂w-|*h₂ey-|id2=life}}, {{uder|en|la|puer}} Latin puer, {{uder|en|de|-}} German Head templates: {{en-noun|pueri aeterni|nolinkhead=1}} puer aeternus (plural pueri aeterni)
  1. (mythology) A child-god who is forever young.
    Sense id: en-puer_aeternus-en-noun-ZdzWHI4d Categories (other): Mythology, English entries with incorrect language header, English undefined derivations, Pages with 2 entries, Pages with entries Disambiguation of English entries with incorrect language header: 38 30 32 Disambiguation of English undefined derivations: 33 33 33 Disambiguation of Pages with 2 entries: 31 36 33 Disambiguation of Pages with entries: 31 36 33 Topics: human-sciences, mysticism, mythology, philosophy, sciences
  2. (psychology) An archetype of eternal youth.
    Sense id: en-puer_aeternus-en-noun-0-ljDtHM Categories (other): Psychology, English entries with incorrect language header, English undefined derivations, Pages with 2 entries, Pages with entries Disambiguation of English entries with incorrect language header: 38 30 32 Disambiguation of English undefined derivations: 33 33 33 Disambiguation of Pages with 2 entries: 31 36 33 Disambiguation of Pages with entries: 31 36 33 Topics: human-sciences, psychology, sciences
  3. (loosely) A man who remains emotionally childlike. Tags: broadly
    Sense id: en-puer_aeternus-en-noun-K0WSDDB5 Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header, English undefined derivations, Pages with 2 entries, Pages with entries Disambiguation of English entries with incorrect language header: 38 30 32 Disambiguation of English undefined derivations: 33 33 33 Disambiguation of Pages with 2 entries: 31 36 33 Disambiguation of Pages with entries: 31 36 33
The following are not (yet) sense-disambiguated
Synonyms: puer Related terms: agerasia, permayouth Coordinate_terms: puella aeterna

Inflected forms

Alternative forms

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        "(psychology) An archetype of eternal youth."
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          "ref": "2017, David Friend, The Naughty Nineties:",
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    "English terms derived from Proto-Indo-European",
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}

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This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2025-06-05 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2025-06-01 using wiktextract (5ee713e and f1c2b61). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.