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Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
dotage
noun
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ Thurmond is as mean in his dotage as he was in his younger days.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ And don't sign him into his dotage and whine about his getting old later.
▪ For while Hare was playing out his dotage, the backroom was at work.
▪ Is this how we want to spend our dotage?
▪ It is as though they could not wait to sink into a dotage spent in permanent contemplation of their childhood.
▪ We all need to work at forgiveness and acceptance right into our dotage.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Dotage

Dotage \Do"tage\, n. [From Dote, v. i.]

  1. Feebleness or imbecility of understanding or mind, particularly in old age; the childishness of old age; senility; as, a venerable man, now in his dotage.

    Capable of distinguishing between the infancy and the dotage of Greek literature.
    --Macaulay.

  2. Foolish utterance; drivel.

    The sapless dotages of old Paris and Salamanca. -- Milton.

  3. Excessive fondness; weak and foolish affection.

    The dotage of the nation on presbytery. -- Bp. Burnet.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
dotage

"the state of one who dotes," c.1300; see dote + -age. Originally of all sorts of mental impairment, not just that resulting from old age. First recorded late 14c. for "senility."

Wiktionary
dotage

n. 1 decline in judgment and other cognitive functions, associated with aging; senility. 2 fondness or attentiveness, especially to an excessive degree. 3 foolish utterance; drivel

WordNet
dotage

n. mental infirmity as a consequence of old age; sometimes shown by foolish infatuations [syn: second childhood, senility]

Usage examples of "dotage".

But then, Nan had said the old lady was in her dotage, so perhaps it had not been such a great accomplishment.

From being an eccentric and outspoken old man in his dotage, he had relapsed into an eccentric and outspoken old man with more faculties at his command than his age warranted.

In marrying old Mr Flawse she had done more than marry a man in his dotage, she had wedded herself to a fortune in antique furniture and fine silver.

Esmerelda talked like she was doddering toward the sunset of her dotage, but her dewy skin was still tinted with the first blush of dawn.

Persian queen as on the poorest peasant maiden, the first hairs to appear as an infant, guardians of her sweet, female scent her entire life, the last wisps to remain on her head in her feeble dotage, defying time and space.

Age granted her that unspoken right, but she hated to take advantage of it now when in her dotage she might truly require it.

When I am an old woman, in my dotage, I will no doubt bore the young with my tale of Marguerida Alton and the Tower of Mirrors.

Now I am getting into my dotage and look on the dark side of everything.

With his moist bright red mouth and fluffy white whiskers he had begun to look, if not respectable, at least harmless, and his shrunken body had assumed such a gossamery aspect that the matrons of his dingy neighbourhood, as they watched him shuffle along in the fluorescent halo of his dotage, felt almost like crooning over him and would buy him cherries and hot raisin cakes and the loud socks he affected.

And His Majesty, who at that time was prosecuting one war in the north and another in the west, thought it the better course to follow to not pick another fight with Rome at the same time, so he finally sent the flea-bitten old desert rat back to Dublin with assurances that word of his quite innocent attempts to reinstitute some usages of past centuries had been deliberately blown up and embroidered upon by his legions of sworn enemies to give the appearance of a state of apostasy in his household and realm and that there was no truth or merit to any of it and that only a man slipping into his senile dotage would have believed the tale of Ard-Righ Brian VII, Righ of Mide and Ri of the southern branch of Ui Neill to begin.

Old Oswi Rabi himself--too much sunk in dotage to understand what was going on--yet smiled and looked glad on the merry faces about him.

David and Abishag the Shunammite, Troy was forced to the disagreeable conclusion that Sir Henry was in his dotage about Miss Orrincourt.

Moonshine was as old as her litter mate Nutmeg but much sprier in her dotage, despite countless litters.

Now I am getting into my dotage and look on the dark side of everything.

Eighty Years Old, within eleven Days after he had brought a Mother-in-Law upon her, in a Fit of Dotage, demanded her Right to her Father's Estate, before the four Courts of the Centumvirate, assembled.