pedomorphism


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Related to pedomorphism: neotenous, pedomorphosis

pe·do·mor·phism

(pē′də-môr′fĭz′əm)
n.
1. See neoteny.
2. The description of the behavior of an adult in terms more appropriate to the description of a child's behavior.
pe′do·mor′phic (-fĭk) adj.
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

pe•do•mor•phism

or pae•do•mor•phism

(ˌpi dəˈmɔr fɪz əm)

n.
the retention by an adult organism of a juvenile or larval form.
[1890–95]
pe`do•mor′phic, adj.
Random House Kernerman Webster's College Dictionary, © 2010 K Dictionaries Ltd. Copyright 2005, 1997, 1991 by Random House, Inc. All rights reserved.
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The locomotive engines, however, belong in both categories; their status as mobile tools, combined with the fact that they symbolize nostalgia for earlier, supposedly simpler times, makes them an ideal focus for Cox's argument, which parses out the implications of "pedomorphism"--the projection of childlike characteristics onto machines that otherwise appear to be adult--for how we understand children and childhood.
Child king
It's a mild, tractable animal because it has never grown up into savagery." Both novels thus imply that our most human qualities stem from "abnormal" deviations from ancestral "normality." Dystopia in Brave New World results from straightening the nonlinear dynamics of Bildung, reversing the "humanizing principle ot pedomorphism" (Drennan quoted in Montagu 1955,22).
"Education of an Amphibian": Anachrony, Neoteny, and Bildung in Huxley's eyeless in Gaza

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