This week we continue our vocabulary-building series, “The Closing Word.” Each week we provide a new word to help build your vocabulary and show you an example of how to use it.
This week’s closing word:
dotard
Pronounced: (DOH-turd)
Noun:
an oldster in his dotage; someone whose age has impaired his intellect
From Vocabulary.com: “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.”
Example:
“With his old flip phone and post-it notes slapped all over his dashboard, the agent came across as something of a dotard.”
