What's the difference between dotage and foolish?

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.

Foolish


Definition:

  • (a.) Marked with, or exhibiting, folly; void of understanding; weak in intellect; without judgment or discretion; silly; unwise.
  • (a.) Such as a fool would do; proceeding from weakness of mind or silliness; exhibiting a want of judgment or discretion; as, a foolish act.
  • (a.) Absurd; ridiculous; despicable; contemptible.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) So, logic would dictate that if Greeks are genuinely in favour of reform – and opinion polls have consistently shown wide support for many of the structural changes needed – they would be foolish to give these two parties another chance.
  • (2) It would be foolish to bet that Saudi Arabia will exist in its current form a generation from now.” Memories of how the Saudis and Opec deliberately triggered an economic crisis in the west in retaliation for US aid to Israel during the 1973 Yom Kippur war still rankle.
  • (3) That's foolish, because Real Madrid rarely look more uncomfortable than at set pieces.
  • (4) "We regret that Congress was forced to waste its time voting on a foolish bill that was premised entirely on false claims and ignorance," David Jenkins, an REP official, said in a statement.
  • (5) Shorten said while Hicks was “foolish to get caught up in the Afghanistan conflict” the court decision showed an injustice.
  • (6) Many commentators considered the suggestion merely foolish, but computer hackers issued death threats against her and her children, which she promptly posted on Twitter, along with the defiant message: "Get stuffed, losers.
  • (7) And it means that if Labour were to win, Mr Brown would be very foolish, indeed downright wrong, to move Mr Darling.
  • (8) "It was a certain kind of titillation the shop offered," the critic Matthew Collings has written, "sexual but also hopeless, destructive, foolish, funny, sad."
  • (9) Describing the moment McKellen knocked on his dressing room door he said: “I ushered him in nervously, expecting notes for my poor performance or indiscipline – I was a foolish, naughty young actor.
  • (10) But what people did when they were young and foolish, or even when they were not yet public figures, is not always the same.
  • (11) While we have this, it would be foolish to pursue a policy of still constraining resources in the acute sector.
  • (12) All three echoed remarks made recently by the Bank’s governor, Mark Carney, who said it would be “foolish” to cut rates in response to a temporary fall in inflation.
  • (13) Since the initially peaceful demonstrations against his regime began more than three years ago, he has proved himself, by turns, foolish, craven and vicious.
  • (14) In a high-risk, 65-minute speech in Manchester delivered without notes, and 20 minutes longer than he intended, Miliband tried to take the mantle of the 19th-century Tory prime minister Benjamin Disraeli's one nation, pointedly grabbing the territory and language of the centre ground which he believes David Cameron has foolishly vacated.
  • (15) But one backbencher, West Australian Liberal Dennis Jensen , has said it is foolish to set up a $20bn medical research fund at the same time as the government is cutting money from scientific agencies, including the CSIRO and the Australian Research Council.
  • (16) Donald Trump is too weak, too foolish and too chaotic to see beyond the immediate crises he has created.
  • (17) Here, too, Capote displayed uncanny journalistic skills, capturing even the most languid and enigmatic of subjects – Brando in his pomp – and eliciting the kinds of confidences that left the actor reflecting ruefully on his "unutterable foolishness".
  • (18) They privately acknowledge they were foolish in taking the bait, but argue they have broken no rules since they were offered no jobs, and therefore have no commercial interests to declare in the MPs' register.
  • (19) "Hopefully, the lesson is to stop this foolish childishness," McCain said Thursday on CNN.
  • (20) The only thing that one really knows about human nature is that it changes.” As for the social conditions that obtain: “It is exactly the existing conditions that one objects to, and any scheme that could accept these conditions is wrong and foolish.” Looking back on my political activism of the 1970s and 80s, there was a lot of refusing to accept existing conditions on the basis that they were “wrong and foolish”.

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