dotard
Other forms: dotards
You might think of the eccentric old man next door as a dotard, but it wouldn't be very polite to refer to him that way out loud. A dotard is a person who's old and senile.
The noun dotard used to be a standard way to insult someone by implying that they were physically and mentally decrepit. Shakespeare, Chaucer, and J.R.R. Tolkien all used it regularly as a put-down between characters. Dotard is much less common these days. It comes from the Middle Low German doten, "be foolish," and when correctly pronounced, it rhymes with goatherd.
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Vocabulary lists containing dotard
No time to scour the headlines or watch the news? No problem! We’ve rounded up the top words heard, read, debated, and discussed this week. This was a week of bold moves. Whether you agree with him or not, President Trump gave an audacious speech at the U.N. General Assembly, taking the initiative to emphatically point an accusatory finger at countries like North Korea and Iran. Whether his words will exacerbate tensions and further imperil our relationships with these countries remains to be seen. Football player J.J. Watt was also bold in his charity work, obliterating bureaucratic red tape and raising over $37 million dollars for hurricane victims. Less successful, but just as bold, was the release of the audacious film "Mother!" Also exhibiting initiative was the state of Rhode Island, which decided not to wait for Congress to act to save the "Dreamers" and resolved to pay all the registration fees for the affected immigrants out of state funds. Take a look back at the week that was, vocabulary style.
Tired of their constant bickering, Beatrice and Benedick's friends hatch a plan to get the two to fall in love. Learn these words from Shakespeare's comedy about fidelity and deception. Read the full text here.
