When did you first add the word "dotard" to your vocabulary?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I just saw on my FB feed an item about Kim Jong Un coming up with an insult to get back at President Trump for calling him “Rocket Man.”

According to the report I read, Kim’s retort, in Korean, described Trump as a “beast lunatic.” When NK official translators put it into English, however, they rendered it as “dotard.”

Apparently, this was newsworthy because one of the first reactions on the internet was a sharp spike in lookups of the word “dotard.”

This is a bit strange to me, as I have known the word for up to fifty years (not that I USE it as a matter of course, but I’m comfortable encountering it in a sentence).

I can’t precisely remember where I first encountered it. I won’t lay money on it, but I want to say that Tolkien slipped it into someone making conversation about Theoden of Rohan, or possibly Denethor denying it about himself. I also wonder if I saw it in a plot synopsis of King Lear.

What say you, Dopers? How long have you known the meaning of the word?

2

37 years old and until this thread I’ve never heard the word and I’m not even sure how to pronounce it.

I have no idea if it was common 50 or 40 or 30 years ago, but I’m curious if some people used it because it sounds like retard. Just like you have to assume at least some people still today use niggardly because they know it’ll get a rise out of people. There’s better words to use and anyone well spoken enough to know that word can come up with a better one (sorry, /end rant).

3

I have heard it and it was a long time ago. yes, it might be from Lord of the Rings - it is almost certainly from a book.

:slight_smile:

4

I think it depends how wide your reading is. A dotard is someone who is in his dotage. I’ve known both words for 45+ years.

5

Years ago. As mentioned above, it’s in LOTR, and I used the word in one of my own books ~15 years ago. If one is in one’s dotage, then one is a dotard.

6

I’m 60 and have never heard the word until now. And I’m not likely to add it to my vocabulary. I’ll probably have forgotten it by tomorrow.

7

I imagine I’d heard it earlier — I’m pretty sure Shakespeare must have used it — but this is probably the first time the term really registered with me as well: ‘Dotard! What is the house of Eorl but a thatched barn where brigands drink in the reek, and their brats roll on the floor among the dogs?’
-Saruman to Théoden, The Two Towers(Incidentally, given his level of maturity and tact, I’ve gotten into the habit of referring to President Trump as Donald the Menace.)

8

Dunno when I learned it, but it’s in several texts that I teach regularly (The Wife of Bath’s Prologue, Much Ado About Nothing, The Winter’s Tale), so I sure hope my students know it.

9

Know the word but have never used it.

10

My vocabulary is fairly large and varied but I don’t think I had ever heard it before. Without looking up the definition, I am still not sure what it means. I tend to assume a very old retard just by the sound of it.

11

When? At age 12 or 13 when I read LOTR, at the latest.

12

I can’t recall when or where I first heard it, but I did know it. I must have encountered it in reading. I’ve never heard anyone use it in casual conversation that I recall, nor used it myself. I think I’ve run across “dotage” a little more often.

One reason I’m pretty sure it’s a book word for me is that I had to look up how to pronounce it.

ETA: I haven’t read LOTR, so I must have come across it somewhere else. No idea where though.

13

About two minutes now.

14

Another person who knew the word but has never used it. Which is probably just as well; I just checked and I had the pronunciation wrong. I thought it sounded like daughter-d. But I was wrong. It sounds like doe-terd.

15

I’ll put it into rotation right after Confeve.

16

This. GreenWyvern’s etymology makes complete sense. But it’s all news to me this morning.

I doubt I’ll be adding this word to my active vocabulary. Donald the Menace on the other hand is gold. That’s a keeper.

17

IIRC, my first exposure to Shakespeare was in 5th grade or so. That would have been in the late 1950s.

18

I saw that too in some media accounts, equating ‘dotard’ with ‘beast lunatic’ but that’s not correct. The whole epithet was ‘늙다리 미치광이’, which was translated as ‘mentally deranged dotard’. The first part, ‘늙다리’, means a broken down old animal or person. For example definition 1 in the Minjung Essence dictionary app is ‘old animal’. Definition 2 includes ‘dotard’ along with ‘silly old man’ etc. The second part, ‘미치광이’, means a crazy person.

So as often with NK translations it ends up using a semi-archaic English word, but such translations are still in ROK dictionaries too and it’s not wrong. It’s just that translators in ROK are more likely to be in touch with what sounds strange in modern English usage. OTOH Korean American staff members at US media co’s might be able to make small talk to their older relatives in Korean, but don’t want to admit or even realize they don’t know the language that well. Some mistakes by US media in second guessing Korean translations may come from that.

19

I don’t remember exactly, but I was fairly young when I came across the form “In his Dotage” in some book, and really fell in love with that phrase.I looked for opportunities to use it. But those cases are rare, and when occasion only presented the opportunity to use dotard I would happily settle for that.

20

I just used it over in a Thread Games post. Boy, was that handy! Thanks, SDMB!