DOTAGE

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does dotage mean? 

• DOTAGE (noun)
  The noun DOTAGE has 1 sense:

1. mental infirmity as a consequence of old age; sometimes shown by foolish infatuations

  Familiarity information: DOTAGE used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• DOTAGE (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Mental infirmity as a consequence of old age; sometimes shown by foolish infatuations

Classified under:

Nouns denoting time and temporal relations

Synonyms:

dotage; second childhood; senility

Hypernyms ("dotage" is a kind of...):

age; eld; geezerhood; old age; years (a late time of life)

 Context examples 

To remind; and passed the intervening period in a state of dotage.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

He said, “they commonly acted like mortals till about thirty years old; after which, by degrees, they grew melancholy and dejected, increasing in both till they came to fourscore. This he learned from their own confession: for otherwise, there not being above two or three of that species born in an age, they were too few to form a general observation by. When they came to fourscore years, which is reckoned the extremity of living in this country, they had not only all the follies and infirmities of other old men, but many more which arose from the dreadful prospect of never dying. They were not only opinionative, peevish, covetous, morose, vain, talkative, but incapable of friendship, and dead to all natural affection, which never descended below their grandchildren. Envy and impotent desires are their prevailing passions. But those objects against which their envy seems principally directed, are the vices of the younger sort and the deaths of the old. By reflecting on the former, they find themselves cut off from all possibility of pleasure; and whenever they see a funeral, they lament and repine that others have gone to a harbour of rest to which they themselves never can hope to arrive. They have no remembrance of anything but what they learned and observed in their youth and middle-age, and even that is very imperfect; and for the truth or particulars of any fact, it is safer to depend on common tradition, than upon their best recollections. The least miserable among them appear to be those who turn to dotage, and entirely lose their memories; these meet with more pity and assistance, because they want many bad qualities which abound in others.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

“The old ass has drunk himself into a state of dotage,” said Uriah, turning uglier than before, “and it has been got from him by fraud!”

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)