doddering

English

Pronunciation

• Audio (General American):

  (file)

Adjective

doddering (not comparable)

1. mentally or physically infirm due to old age; senile
   • 1908, G[ilbert] K[eith] Chesterton, The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare, Bristol: J[ames] W[illiams] Arrowsmith, […]; London: Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent & Company, →OCLC, page 212:

     You great fat, blasted, blear-eyed, blundering, thundering, brainless, God-forsaken, doddering, damned fool!

   • 1963, Thomas Pynchon, V., J. B. Lippincott & Co., →LCCN, →OCLC, page 241:

     Treat the doddering old fool with sympathy.

   • 2005, J. M. Coetzee, “Four”, in Slow Man, New York: Viking, →ISBN, page 28:

     She treats him not as a doddering old fool but as a man hampered in his movements by injury.

Derived terms

• dodderingly

 

Verb

doddering

1. present participle and gerund of dodder

Noun

doddering (plural dodderings)

1. A shaking or trembling movement, as of old age.
   • 2001, Seth Kohn, Escape on the Silk Road, page 7:

     Now that he was next in line to the minister of state security himself, an 82 year old man whose dodderings Fang graciously covered up to save everyone's face, Fang had a huge problem.