What's the difference between dotage and dotard?

Dotage


Definition:

  • (v. i.) 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.
  • (v. i.) Foolish utterance; drivel.
  • (v. i.) Excessive fondness; weak and foolish affection.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Instead, when I think of great skin I think of Katharine Hepburn in her dotage .
  • (2) The Miliband brothers, whom cartoonists still put in short trousers, are clearly not contemplating dotage just yet, and so surely their gooey professions of love should be set aside for the sterner dictates of combat.
  • (3) Indeed, Lord Hutton might even be criticised for proposing such a sweeping waiver for uniformed servicemen, who, he insists, must always be able to draw a pension at 60, even though his own figures show that most of them move on to other paid jobs, as opposed to a dependent dotage.
  • (4) In contrast to that bright 1990s vision of a future UK, it is, moreover, an old country, whose dotage is portrayed as a matter of crabby resentment, a place where there is a collective wish to lock all the doors.
  • (5) The choices we make for our ­children become lifestyle choices (with the result that they stay at home into their dotage, knowing their ­parents will make sure they have the right clothes, hair gel, TVs, iPods and iPads.
  • (6) Concerning the mother child relationship, there were elements of "anxiety" "dotage" "follow blindly" "disagreement".
  • (7) They can now happily carry on watching BBC4 into their dotage.
  • (8) For example in the peak years of his Manchester United dotage the phrase “Paul Scholes, he’s a bit overrated isn’t he?” was effectively unprintable, its publication likely to spark mob anger, civil unrest, punishable ultimately by being stabbed in the eye with a skewer by the Queen.
  • (9) The mothers of group B showed attitudes of dotage and anxiety, especially when their children were over 12 years of age and the seizures were not controlled.
  • (10) But there are no false notions of greatness here, the country will bask in a warm glow for weeks to come and today's kids will remember the winter of the South African World cup well into their dotage."
  • (11) Psychology Today reported at the end of last year that more than a third of us have a distant relationship with our brothers or sisters as adults because of a childhood rivalry that never fully dissipated, while any hopes of an ultimately long-term ceasefire tends to arrive only in our dotage.

Dotard


Definition:

  • (v. i.) One whose mind is impaired by age; one in second childhood.

Example Sentences:

Words possibly related to "dotard"