dotardly

dotardly

English

Etymology

dotard +‎ -ly

Adjective

dotardly (comparative more dotardly, superlative most dotardly)

1. Like a dotard; foolish and weak.
   • 1669, Henry More, An exposition of the seven epistles to the seven churches together with a brief discourse of idolatry, with application to the Church of Rome:

     To direct our Adoration toward a supernatural and unimitable Transplendency of the Divine Presence, or to any visible corporeall nature that is hypostatically united with the Divinity, most assuredly is not that sunk and sottish, that dull and dotardly sin of Idolatry.

   • 1848, The Millennial Harbinger, volume 5, page 307:

     Now can any one, free from prejudice, imagine that if infant baptism had been from the beginning a primitive apostolic usage, such a superannuated dotardly affair as this Carthage decision could possibly have occurred, or that such a question should have been debatead as late as the last half of the 3d century?

   • 2015, Peter Dickinson, One Foot in the Grave:

     During his one reconnaissance visit—affable, dotardly, returning a fork which had somehow got missed from his breakfast tray—he had seen a tall stool standing in the niche.