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Dotard   Listen
noun
Dotard  n.  One whose mind is impaired by age; one in second childhood. "The sickly dotard wants a wife."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Dotard" Quotes from Famous Books



... inheritance, and worth wins power better than birth. Moreover, it is no shame to overthrow old age, which of its own weight sinks and totters to its fall. It shall be enough for my father to have borne the sceptre for so long; let the dotard's power fall to thee; if it elude thee, it will pass to another. Whatsoever rests on old age is near its fall. Think that his reign has been long enough, and be it thine, though late in the day, to be first. Further, I would rather have my husband than ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")

... is too absurd to be entertained; or, again, as a sort of contemptuous acquittal of one, who after all has not wit enough to be wicked. But this is not at all what Mr. Kingsley proposes to himself in the antithesis which he suggests to his readers. Though he speaks of me as an utter dotard and fanatic, yet all along, from the beginning of his pamphlet to the end, he insinuates, he proves from my writings, and at length in his last pages he openly pronounces, that after all he was right at first, in thinking me ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman

... is but a long loss of those whom we love. They leave behind them a train of sorrows. Destiny amazes us by a prolixity of unbearable suffering; who then can wonder that the old are garrulous? It is despair that makes the dotard, old fellow! Homo, the wind continues favourable. We can no longer see the dome of St. Paul's. We shall pass Greenwich presently. That will be six good miles over. Oh! I turn my back for ever on those odious capitals, full of priests, of magistrates, and of people. ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo

... If, however, she escape all these early influences of depravation; if her idleness, and solitude and precocious knowledge leave her unvitiated, if, when she goes into society, it is by marriage with a man who is neither a dotard nor a fortune-seeker, and who remains constant and does not tempt her, by neglect, to forbode offense and to inflict anticipative reprisals—yet her purity goes uncredited, as her guilt would go unpunished; ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells

... prating dotard," said Front-de Boeuf, "lock him up in the chapel, to tell his beads till the broil be over. It will be a new thing to the saints in Torquilstone to hear aves and paters; they have not been so honoured, I trow, since they were cut ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott

... meet various types of men—some of them, it may be, types which you and I have never encountered; but even to Chichikov this particular species was new. In the old man's face there was nothing very special—it was much like the wizened face of many another dotard, save that the chin was so greatly projected that whenever he spoke he was forced to wipe it with a handkerchief to avoid dribbling, and that his small eyes were not yet grown dull, but twinkled under their overhanging brows like the eyes of mice ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol

... are derived from verbs or adjectives, and denote character or habit; as, "Drunk, drunkard; dote, dotard." ...
— English Grammar in Familiar Lectures • Samuel Kirkham

... scare women, and Khosrul's followers can so play with the strings of electricity that ye are duped into accepting the witch-glamour as Heaven's own cloud-flame! By the gods! If Al-Kyris falls, as yon dotard pronounceth, her ruins shall bury but few heroes! O superstitious and degraded souls! ... I would ye were even as I am—a man dauntless,—a ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli

... the year 1808 that the news arrived in Mexico of the imprisonment of Charles IV. and Ferdinand VII., the dotard and simpleton who then disputed the Spanish throne, and who had rendered themselves the laughing stock of all Europe by going, each one in person, to advocate his side of a family quarrel before a common enemy, the French Emperor, by whom both had thus been caught like ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson

... inside it?" said Vautrin, holding the letter up to the light. "A banknote? No." He peered into the envelope. "A receipted account!" he cried. "My word! 'tis a gallant old dotard. Off with you, old chap," he said, bringing down a hand on Christophe's head, and spinning the man round like a thimble; "you will have a ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac

... the Duke demanded, angrily. "Am I to have the gaiety of my guests spoiled because of this old dotard? Take him to prison." The attendants rushed in and seized Monterone, while he turned again upon the dwarf and cursed him roundly. Not only did the dwarf shrink back, the whole company became affrighted, while the old man was silenced at last by the guards, and Rigoletto hurried, ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon

... to work with zeal, believing it was Bouvard's own case, and calling him an old dotard, even though he congratulated ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert

... kissed me on the cheek and set off for school as fast as his legs could carry him. O Love, omnivorous Love, that sparest neither the dotard leaning on his staff nor the boy with pantaloons buttoning on his jacket,—omnipotent Love, that, after parents and teachers have failed, in one instant can make Billy try to become a ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various

... of the Dauphine herself may be in part ascribed the unwonted virulence of the jealousy and resentment of Du Barry. The old dotard, Louis XV., was so indelicate as to have her present at the first supper of the Dauphine at Versailles. Madame la Marechale de Beaumont, the Duchesse de Choiseul, and the Duchesse de Grammont were there also; but upon the favourite taking her seat at table they expressed themselves ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 3 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe

... "Why, you poor old dotard, there's no oil in these specimens. You can smell 'em yourself if you want to," he said. But there was something in his manner of the lady who doth protest ...
— The Bad Man • Charles Hanson Towne

... exposed, she heard a cry of some one from the house in the street opposite, and Bhanavar beheld in the house of the broker an old wrinkled fellow that gesticulated to her in a frenzy. She snatched her veil down and drew in her head in anger at him, calling to her maids, 'What is yonder hideous old dotard?' ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... else, but of a very aged bonze, of unkempt appearance, cooking his rice. When Y-ts'un perceived that he paid no notice, he went up to him and asked him one or two questions, but as the old priest was dull of hearing and a dotard, and as he had lost his teeth, and his tongue was blunt, he made ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin

... feminine beauty thought her eyes and eyebrows too light,[182] but, as an Italian, he may have been biassed in favour of brunettes, and even he wound up by calling Mary "a Paradise". She was eighteen at the time; her marriage with a dotard like Louis had shocked public opinion;[183] and if, as was hinted, the gaieties in which his youthful bride involved him, hastened the French King's end, there was some poetic justice in the retribution. She had, ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard

... from them. Horrible sins were committed by that warrior, and God brought him and them to a terrible judgment. Yet God turned the curses to blessings. The young, warm, vigorous blood of Greece, and her splendid literature, and magnificent arts were carried into the heart of Asia, and raised those old dotard nations to a second youth; inspired them with power and light; flooded their lands with new and noble ideas, and brought sluggish and unsocial peoples into commerce, unity, progress, ...
— Summerfield - or, Life on a Farm • Day Kellogg Lee

... enough; but worse than this Were the attentions of our ancient hero, Whose frequent vow, and frequenter caress, Unwelcome were for any one to hear, who Had charms for better pleasure than a kiss From feeble dotard ten degrees from zero. So, as one does when circumstances harass one, Hy-son began to draw ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, November 27, 1841 • Various

... The old dotard Francis Joseph who occupied the throne of Austria-Hungary, was completely under the domination of the Germans. He could be relied upon to further any designs which the Kaiser and the German war ...
— History of the American Negro in the Great World War • W. Allison Sweeney

... asses, horses, hounds, They be *assayed at diverse stounds,* *tested at various Basons and lavers, ere that men them buy, seasons Spoones, stooles, and all such husbandry, And so be pots, and clothes, and array,* *raiment But folk of wives make none assay, Till they be wedded, — olde dotard shrew! — And then, say'st thou, we will our vices shew. Thou say'st also, that it displeaseth me, But if * that thou wilt praise my beauty, *unless And but* thou pore alway upon my face, *unless And call me faire dame in every place; And but* thou make a ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer

... he acknowledges it!" roared the magician. "Wretch, dotard, owl, mole, miserable buzzard! I have no reason to tell thee now that thy form is monstrous, that children cry, that cowards turn pale, that teeming matrons shudder to behold it. It is not thy fault ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray

... answered Mr. Sam, wagging a finger at him, "tolerated many things I do not propose to tolerate. He suffered this old dotard to annoy the public, though long past work. I am not surprised to learn that he suffered you to ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... shoulder'd reason thence: I am not old, and yet, alas! I doat; I have not lost my sight, and yet am blind; No bondman, yet have lost my liberty; No natural fool, and yet I want my wit. What am I, then? let me define myself: A dotard young, a blind man that can see, A witty fool, a bondman ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various

... 'Peace, dotard!' cried one of those who guarded and led him; and at the same moment brought his spear with such force upon his head that he ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware

... Ann. I am no more that schoolboy now than I am the dotard of ninety I shall grow into if I live long enough. It is ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw

... I beg your pardon for this slight resume of warlike facts, but it is of no consequence. Lord Wellington is, for you, only a decayed old gentleman now. I rather think some of you have called him a "dotard;" you have taunted him with his age and the loss of his physical vigour. What fine heroes you are yourselves! Men like you have a right to trample on what is mortal in a demigod. Scoff at your ease; your scorn can never break ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte

... with a chuckle). Make thyself easy, old dotard! thou wilt never more press thy darling to thy bosom—there is a gulf between thee and him impassable as heaven is from hell. He was torn from thy arms before even thou couldst have dreamed it possible ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... set me in the hot forefront of battle Hadst thou but known me as Uriah! Bah! Why, what a brainless dullard have I been, To see this pretty puff-ball of a preacher Wax large before mine eyes in righteous husk— And think him whole within—when but a touch, But one, had aired his rottenness! Oh! dotard that I am! blind, deaf and stupid! It takes a miracle to make me see What lay before me open. He did take Her part; ever professed himself her friend; And at her trial fell in trance. What more? He is the man! He is the man! Now ends our game of hoodman blind; oh, I Was warm, so very warm at ...
— The Scarlet Stigma - A Drama in Four Acts • James Edgar Smith

... scythe may whet, The unmowed grass is glowing yet Beneath the sheltering snow, my boys; And if the crazy dotard ask, Is love worn out? Is life a task? We'll bravely answer No! my boys, We 'll bravely ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... to the Spanish monks' demand that the extreme penalty of the law should be inflicted upon their opponents. Thereupon, Dr. Jose Burgos (aged 30 years), Father Jacinto Zamora (aged 35 years), and Father Mariano Gomez [45] (a dotard, 85 years of age) were executed (February 28, 1872) on the Luneta, the fashionable esplanade outside the walled city, ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman

... forget the grossness of the subject of this tale, (the Merchant's,) while we are struck by the uncommon ease and readiness of the verse, the suitableness of the expression, and the spirit and happiness of the whole." While Dr Warton, sensibly remarking, "that the character of a fond old dotard, betrayed into disgrace by an unsuitable match, is supported in a lively manner," refrains from making himself ridiculous by mealy-mouthed moralities which on such a subject every person of sense and honesty must ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various

... Scriptures and science, and that there are many with a superficial knowledge of the Scriptures and with no knowledge of science who would fain arrogate to themselves the power of decreeing upon all questions of nature. As St. Jerome writes: "The talking old woman, the dotard, the garrulous sophist, all venture upon, lacerate, teach, before they have learnt. Others, induced by pride, dive into hard words, and philosophate among women touching the Holy Scriptures. Others (oh, shameful!) learn of women ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various

... fair! Each glance that wins us, and the life that throws A spell which will not let our looks repose, 40 But turn to gaze again, and find anew Some charm that well rewards another view. These are not lessened, these are still as bright, Albeit too dazzling for a dotard's sight; And those must wait till ev'ry charm is gone, To please the paltry heart that pleases none;— That dull cold sensualist, whose sickly eye In envious dimness passed thy portrait by; Who racked his little spirit to combine Its hate of ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron

... habit to obey the word, half because they were cowed by the majestic presence, the guard stood still and the drum was silenced. Andros spurred forward, but even he made a pause when he saw the staff levelled at his breast. "Forward!" he blustered. "Trample the dotard into the street. How dare ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner

... the aged man; Who thinks, when old, to act as he began; But, if the sage a yielding dotard seems, His work is done by those the wife esteems; Complaints are never heard; no thrilling fears; And ev'ry ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine

... his "Medecin malgre lui," his "Etourdi," his "L'Avare," and his "Scapin." Milan offered a pimp in the Brighella; Florence an ape of fashion in Gelsomino. These and other pantomimic characters, and some ludicrous ones, as the Tartaglia, a spectacled dotard, a stammerer, and usually in a passion, had been gradually introduced by the inventive powers of an actor of genius, to call forth his own ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli

... quite out of patience, the slave Mansouri took Babadul by his beard, and shaking his head for him, exclaimed with a roar, "Then tell me, you old dotard! what is it doing?" ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier

... you as being wonderful and most unnatural that this Ploermel, who is neither absolutely a dotard nor an old woman, should accept your hand ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various

... him with us here a prisoner?" suggested an old buck; only to be cried down loudly as a doddering dotard, whose blood had turned ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams

... people looked on the barber as a buffoon, or an old dotard. "Silent man," said the sultan, "why do you laugh?" "Sir," answered the barber, "I swear by your majesty's benevolence, that humpback is not dead: he is yet alive, and I shall be content to pass for a madman ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous

... but a harsh voice me this ear in reply. He was grasped by the arms, and, looking up, perceived three strange men in the chamber. He attempted to shake them off, but in vain. He called for help, but they scoffed at his cries. "Peace, dotard!" cried one: "think'st thou the servants of the most holy inquisition are to be daunted by thy ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving

... treated every day on the boards at Naples; the same rough daubs, half improvised on the spur of the moment; the same frankly coarse and indecent gayety. The Odeon where we are now, was the Pompeian San Carlino. Bucco, the stupid and mocking buffoon; the dotard Pappus, who reminds us of the Venetian Pantaloon; Mandacus, who is the Neapolitan Guappo; the Oscan Casnar, a first edition of Cassandra; and finally, Maccus, the king of the company, the Punchinello who still survives and flourishes,—such ...
— The Wonders of Pompeii • Marc Monnier

... what constitutes the true and real tragedy of Richard Carstone. It is strictly the one and only great tragedy that Dickens wrote. It is like the tragedy of Hamlet. The others are not tragedies because they deal almost with dead men. The tragedy of old Dorrit is merely the sad spectacle of a dotard dragged about Europe in his last childhood. The tragedy of Steerforth is only that of one who dies suddenly; the tragedy of old Dombey only that of one who was dead all the time. But Rick is a real tragedy, for he is still alive when the ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton

... Dee, our English "Faust," as he is not inaptly called, has both been misrepresented and misunderstood. An enthusiast he undoubtedly was, but not the drivelling dotard that some of his biographers imagine. A man of profound learning, distinguished for attainments far beyond the general range of his contemporaries, he, like Faustus, and the wisest of human kind, had found out how little he ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby

... before, and that was not in earnest, and many years ago, as an exercise—and I will never write another. They are the most puling, petrifying, stupidly platonic compositions. I detest the Petrarch so much, that I would not be the man even to have obtained his Laura, which the metaphysical, whining dotard ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron

... Charles, and proceeded to the election of Ferdinand. That Emperor was crowned in March, and immediately despatched a legation to the Pope to apprize him of the fact. Nothing was less expected than any opposition on the part of the pontiff. The querulous dotard, however, who then sat in St. Peter's chair, hated Charles and all his race. He accordingly denied the validity of the whole transaction, without sanction previously obtained from the Pope, to whom all crowns belonged. Ferdinand, after ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... that I am!" he thought within himself, as he paced the stone floor of his prison-house; "the destiny of the accursed is mine! Ah! fool—dotard that I was to exchange the honors of old age for the vicissitudes of a renewed existence! Had nature taken her course, I should probably now be sleeping in a quiet grave—and my soul might be in the regions of the blessed. But the tempter came, and dazzled me with prospects of endless happiness—and ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds

... falsehood and misrepresentation; and the Lindsays could not look in silence upon the property which they thought ought to be theirs, transferred to the possession of strangers, who had wheedled a dotard to make a will in their favor. Such, however, in thousands of instances, are the consequences ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton

... "Dotard! thou would'st carry thyself and all with thee, by thy narrowness of spirit, to a port from which, when it is once entered, none ever ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper

... to the coward, thou death- telling seer! Or, if gory Culloden so dreadful appear, Draw, dotard, around thy old wavering sight This mantle, to cover the ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous

... dare to cross my way. Old dotard: do you hold My rage in such slight awe you are so bold? What brought you ...
— Life Is A Dream • Pedro Calderon de la Barca

... Bargeton is an old dotard. The indigestion will carry him off before long, no doubt," Lucien said, as he made an end, "and then I will look down on these proud people; I will marry Mme. de Bargeton. I read to-night in her eyes a love as ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac

... seal cutter; for certain am I that, not only would Suddhoo disbelieve me, but this step would end in the poisoning of Janoo, who is bound hand and foot by her debt to the bunnia. Suddhoo is an old dotard; and whenever we meet mumbles my idiotic joke that the Sirkar rather patronizes the Black Art than otherwise. His son is well now; but Suddhoo is completely under the influence of the seal cutter, by whose advice he regulates the affairs of his life. Janoo watches daily the money that ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various

... thee, Sa Luia, I love thee! And even if thou canst not love me, yet shall I save thee from wedding this old dotard. Aye, I shall save thee from him as I saved thee from the boiling serf of Falema'a when thy mother, who was a great lady, cried out ...
— A Memory Of The Southern Seas - 1904 • Louis Becke

... pasture, that those gloomy tracts are now become healthy and habitable. It is not to be imagined how many noble seats and dwellings in this nation of ours, (to all appearance well situated,) are for all that unhealthful, by reason of some grove, or hedge-rows of antiquated dotard trees; nay, sometimes a single tuft only, (especially the falling autumnal leaves neglected to be taken away) filling the air with musty and noxious exhalations; which being ventilated, by glades cut through them, for passage of the stagnant vapours, have ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn

... is law. She holds despotic sway. Her wont has been to show the narrow way Wherein must tread the world, the bright, the brave, From infancy to dotard's gloomy grave. ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 4, June 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various

... more had hurled upon him the full terror of her vocabulary. She called him a barbarian, a mountain goat,—a Tengu,—better mated to a fox spirit or a she-demon than to a decent girl like her young mistress. She denounced her erstwhile beloved master as a blind old dotard, and the idolized Ume, she declared a weak and yielding idiot. Tatsu's attempts at retort were swept away with a hiss. For a while he raged like a flame upon the doorstep, but he was no match for his vigorous opponent. It was something to realize his own defeat. Gasping, he turned to the friendly ...
— The Dragon Painter • Mary McNeil Fenollosa

... dotard! Good Lord, I know colonial law; I've been skating on the edge of it on more planets than you're years old. And I never thought of that; why, of course it would. Where are you now, with the Company, by ...
— Little Fuzzy • Henry Beam Piper

... boys" and "visionary young men"; Franklin was an "old dotard" and "in his second childhood"; and as for Washington, "What ...
— Hero Stories from American History - For Elementary Schools • Albert F. Blaisdell

... his bars, his bolts, His withered sentinel, duenna sage! And all whereat the generous soul revolts, Which the stern dotard deemed he could encage, Have passed to darkness with the vanished age. Who late so free as Spanish girls were seen (Ere War uprose in his volcanic rage), With braided tresses bounding o'er the green, While on the gay dance shone ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron

... very high in his estimation. All this brandishing of a crocodile for a standard, and setting a dotard in ambush, and getting rid of slops, and taking good money in exchange, struck him not as Science but something far superior, Strategy. And he boasted in his cups and before a mixed company how "me and my General we are ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade

... father!—you old dotard Dot-and- carry-one that you are," answered the goldsmith. "A sweet youth he would have been by this time, had he lived, worthy nobleman! This is his son, ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott

... begets nothing any more, Jurgen, the while he brings about old happenings over and over, and changes the name of what is ancient, in order to persuade himself he has a new plaything. There is really no more tedious and wearing old dotard anywhere, I can assure you. But Atlantis is only the western province of Cocaigne. Now ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell

... of the citizen class would not hesitate for a moment to refuse an honorable, good-looking man of their own class, in order to go to the altar with the oldest, ugliest and stupidest dotard among the aristocracy. ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant

... brethren of the Western metropolis—"I know many things in God, but I moderate myself that I may not perish through boasting; for now it is becoming to me that I should fear the more abundantly, and should not look to those that puff me up." Let us now hear a specimen of the mysticism of this dotard. "There was hidden from the Ruler of this world the virginity of Mary, and the birth of our Lord, and the three mysteries of the shout, which were done in the quietness of God by means of the star, and here by the manifestation of the Son magic began ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen

... man gave the matter but little thought, usually passing it off as the foolish whim of an old dotard; ...
— The Outlaw of Torn • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... his hand onto my hed and said, in a mournful tone of vois, "Mr. Ward, your mind is failin. Your intellect totters! You are only about sixty years of age, yet you will soon be a drivelin dotard, and ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 7 • Charles Farrar Browne

... with a dull world under, The dreary world of the Commonplace, I have stood when the whole world seemed a blunder Of dotard Time, in an aimless race. With worry about me and want before me - Yet deep in my soul was a rapture spring That made me cry to the grey sky o'er me: 'Oh, I know this life is a ...
— Poems of Progress • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... No! still you have dealt with me as a child; so untaught yet by that last lesson, that even a woman's revenge cannot make you treat me as a woman! Clasfempta! you bear, I believe, outside, the fame of a wise and a firm man; but in these little hands you have been as weak a fool as the veriest dotard might ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg

... will: Who ev'ry Sunday morn, to please her sight, Knots up his neck-cloth gay, and hosen white: Who for her pleasure keeps his pockets bare, And half his wages spends on pedlar's ware; When every niggard clown, or dotard old, Who hides in secret nooks his oft told gold, Whose field or orchard tempts with all her pride, At little cost may win her for his bride; Whilst all the meed her silly lover gains Is but the neighbours' jeering for his pains. On Sunday last when Susan's bands were read, And I astonish'd sat ...
— Poems, &c. (1790) • Joanna Baillie

... be offered," replied she, "to such accusations as these? Witness the last—because I was not so craven as the Christians, I am accused of sorcery. The old dotard! but I will expose him. Tell me, if one knows that sorcery is used, and conceals or allows it, is he not a ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat

... he had lost the power of doing it; and he ended darkly and shamefully, a dotard worshipping idols of wood and stone, among his heathen queens. And thus, as in David the height of chivalry fell to the deepest baseness; so in Solomon the height of wisdom fell to ...
— The Water of Life and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley

... the stress of other occupations. But it was your getting the money from her at the Kaims for Nanny that I was to speak of. Absurd though it seems, I think some dotard must have seen you and her at the Kaims, and mistaken ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie

... words, "With suppliant voice require; Pallas will grant." Sternly the damsel views her; quits the threads Unfinish'd; scarce her hand from force restrains: And rage in all her features flushing fierce, Thus to the goddess, well-disguis'd, she speaks:— "Weak dotard, spent with too great gift of years, "Curst with too long existence, hence, begone! "Such admonition to thy daughters give, "If daughters hast thou; or thy sons have wives: "Enough for me my inbred wisdom serves. "Hope not, that ought thy vain advice has sway'd ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid

... still left in me. But——" He paused. His angry eyes had alighted upon the Count, who stood waiting by the door, and the whole expression of his countenance changed. "You are right, Ferrabraccio, I grow old indeed—a dotard. Take you ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini

... man brushed past him hot with disdain. He was merely an old dotard: empty-minded ...
— Drolls From Shadowland • J. H. Pearce

... dotard like Fleming can be an unfathomable mystery to all the rest of the human race,' said Trent, 'and most of all in a court of justice. The law certainly does not shine when it comes to a case requiring much ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley

... emotions. "The day before yesterday," she thought, "this woman appeared to me to be deranged: she is a lunatic; I wish that Abel were here, he could tell me what happened at dinner between him and this dotard, and we should laugh over it together. Perhaps nothing happened at all. The Princess Gulof should be confined. They do very wrong to let maniacs like that go at large. It is dangerous; the bells of Cormeilles have ceased ringing. Ah! bon Dieu, who knows? Mme. de Lorcy surely ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez

... form, Trampling on freedom, left the alternative Of slavery, or of death. Even from that day, When, on the guilty Capet, I pronounced The doom of injured France, has faction rear'd Her hated head amongst us. Roland preach'd Of mercy—the uxorious, dotard Roland, The woman-govern'd Roland durst aspire To govern France; and Petion talk'd of virtue, And Vergniaud's eloquence, like the honey'd tongue Of some soft Syren wooed us to destruction. We triumph'd over these. On the same scaffold ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge

... invisible, and placed himself in a corner of the room. He soon perceived the father and mother of the bride; and coming behind the mother's chair, whispered in her ear, "If you marry your daughter to that old dotard, before eight days are over you shall certainly die." The woman, frightened to hear such a terrible sentence pronounced upon her, and yet not know from whence it came, gave a loud shriek, and dropped upon the floor. Her husband asked what ailed her: she cried that she was a ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)

... N. veteran, old man, seer, patriarch, graybeard; grandfather, grandsire; grandam; gaffer, gammer; crone; pantaloon; sexagenarian, octogenarian, nonagenarian, centenarian; old stager; dotard &c. 501. preadamite[obs3], Methuselah, Nestor, old Parr; elders; forefathers &c. (paternity) 166. Phr. "superfluous lags the veteran ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... time of weakness come when Austria is bankrupt—when an Emperor of Russia is a dotard or a child, when provinces of Russia become disaffected, or an army mutinies; or again, when France and Austria seriously fall out?... You see I am dosing you with some of my most pungent stuff, in proof that I trust ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking

... grimly. "My cousin had quite supplanted me with my so-called Uncle McClintock. The old dotard would have left him every cent, except for that calf-love affair of Stan's with the Selden girl. Some reflections on the girl's character ...
— Copper Streak Trail • Eugene Manlove Rhodes

... conclusion that my report of the tourney with young Orchan reached my Lord's hand, and I now am patting myself on the back, happy to believe it had something to do with my Lord's decision. The imposition deserved to have its head blown off. Orchan is a dotard. His son's ears are still impaired. In the fall the ground caught him crown first. He will never ride again. The pretension is over.... I rode from the Princess' house directly to Blacherne. The Grand Council was in session: yet the Prefect of the Palace admitted me.... O my Lord, this Constantine ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace

... away, old dotard!" the disappointed young sailor muttered to himself, while he reluctantly obeyed the signal; "you are in as great a hurry to get out of your danger as you were ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper

... who seek for Fate abroad 140 Are not so near his heart as they who dare Frankly to face her where she faces them, On their own threshold, where their souls are strong To grapple with and throw her; as I once, Being yet a boy, did cast this puny king, Who now has grown so dotard as to deem That he can wrestle with an angry realm, And throw the brawned Antaeus of men's rights. No, Hampden! they have half-way conquered Fate Who go half-way to meet her,—as will I. 150 Freedom hath yet a ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... your Brother, and get ye out of doors, and seek your Fortune. Stand still becalm'd, and let an aged Dotard, a hair-brain'd Puppy, and a Bookish Boy, that never knew a Blade above a Pen-knife, and how to cut his meat in Characters, cross my design, and take thine own Wench from thee, in mine own house too? Thou ...
— The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher - Vol. 2 of 10: Introduction to The Elder Brother • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher

... done. He said, 'The Duke ought now to retire from public life, and not expose himself to any appearance of an enfeebled understanding. Above all things to be deprecated is, that he should ever become a dotard like Marlborough, or a driveller like Swift.' 'How,' he said, 'would Aberdeen do?' He owned that nobody could replace the Duke or keep the party in order, and he said that the consequence would be it would break ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville

... himself his state, and shuns to know, That life protracted is protracted woe. Time hovers o'er, impatient to destroy, And shuts up all the passages of joy; In vain their gifts the bounteous seasons pour, The fruit autumnal, and the vernal flow'r; With listless eyes the dotard views the store, He views, and wonders that they please no more; Now pall the tasteless meats, and joyless wines, And luxury with sighs her slave resigns. Approach, ye minstrels, try the soothing strain, [bb]Diffuse the tuneful lenitives of pain: No sounds, alas! would touch th' impervious ear, ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson

... that thou wert but once more young! That I might strike thee to the earth For this audacious lie, thou feeble dotard. ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various

... the hour grows ripe, and a certain dotard Is pitched, no parcel that needs invoicing, 250 To the worse side of the Mont Saint Gothard, We shall begin by way of rejoicing; None of that shooting the sky (blank cartridge), Nor a civic guard, all plumes and lacquer, Hunting ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning

... you'll not take my word for it, But let a dotard's clatterjaw destroy you? You ken my worth: yet, if you care for Jim, You'll trust his oath. If he denies the bairn, Then, you'll believe? You'd surely never doubt Your husband's word, and on your wedding-day? Small wonder you'd be duberous ...
— Krindlesyke • Wilfrid Wilson Gibson

... he asked himself. "A man hired at a few pounds a year and fed at the Maxfield table, in order to help the heir to a little quite unnecessary knowledge of the ancient classics and modern sciences. What was the old dotard,"—the old dotard, by the way, was Captain Oliphant's private manner of referring to the lamented "dear one," whose name so often trembled on his lips in public,—"what was the old dotard thinking about? At any rate, I should like to know a little ...
— Roger Ingleton, Minor • Talbot Baines Reed

... old man, seer, patriarch, graybeard; grandfather, grandsire; grandam; gaffer, gammer; crone; pantaloon; sexagenarian, octogenarian, nonagenarian, centenarian; old stager; dotard &c 501. preadamite^, Methuselah, Nestor, old Parr; elders; forefathers &c (paternity) 166. Phr. superfluous lags the veteran on ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... common soldier, a day-laborer, a factory operative, a mechanic, instead of a missionary. If my faculties had been left to run riot or to waste as those of so many young men, I should now have been used up, a dotard, as many of my school-fellows are. I am respected by the natives, their kind expressions often make me ashamed, and they are sincere. So much deference and favor manifested without any effort on my part to secure it comes from the Author ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie

... ire—not because he had counted out the hairs, but because there had not been more to count. Jumping to her feet in her wrath, she exclaimed, "Fool that I was, to have withheld one, when the old dotard would have paid for it so richly. But it cannot now be helped," she continued, and resuming her seat, she read the letter through, exploding, but once more, and that at the point where Uncle Nat had spoken of returning asking if there was one who ...
— Dora Deane • Mary J. Holmes

... steel hooks which glitter in a sunbeam which has stolen through the curtains, can disregard the sonorous summons of the obstinate clock, can bury himself in a soft place, saying: "Yes, I was in a hurry, yesterday, but am so no longer to-day. Yesterday was a dotard. To-day is a sage: between them stands the night which brings wisdom, the night which gives light. I ought to go, I ought to do it, I promised I would—I am weak, I know. But how can I resist the downy creases of my bed? My feet feel flaccid, I think I must be sick, I am too happy ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac

... into a degrading abandonment of his customary elevation of demeanor. 'The dotard, the ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder

... coward, thou whose hands can slay Such Trojan hosts, whose trophies grace the plain. What worth can do, and manhood can essay, We twain may venture. Sooth, not far away Need foes be sought; around the walls they throng. March we to meet them! Dotard, why delay? Still dwells thy War-God in a windy tongue, And flying feet, and ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil

... of error, blacker than the darkness that may be felt, thou seed of Babylon, child of the building of the tower of Chalane, whereby the world was confounded, foolish and pitiable dotard, whose sins out-weigh the iniquity of the five cities that were destroyed by fire and brimstone. Why wouldest thou mock at the preaching of salvation, whereby darkness hath been made light, the wanderers have found the way, they that were lost in dire captivity have been recalled. Tell ...
— Barlaam and Ioasaph • St. John of Damascus

... the wine, however, came the consoling reflection that Iris as a scullery-maid might not tickle the fancy of the dotard who had undertaken to provide fifty thousand pounds for the new partnership. And she had promised—that was everything. His lack of diplomacy was obvious even to himself, but he had won where a man of finer temperament might have failed. Now, he ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy

... the outraged Princess Caroline had no more valiant champion. She not only declined to have anything to say to her husband's mother, she carried her disapproval to the extent of refusing point blank to appear at Court. So furious was the Regent at this slight that "the dotard with corrupted eye and withered heart," as Byron calls him, had her portrait removed from the Palace Gallery of Beauties, ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall

... "The law, you old dotard," cried the Countess, rounding then on him with a suddenness that made him seem to shrink into his shell. "The law! Is a silly wench to run us into danger of losing what is ours? He shall marry her. If ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane

... Thou dotard, hateful to the gods, dost thou guard [these possessions], for fear of wanting thyself: to the end that thy son, or even the freedman thy heir, should guzzle it all up? For how little will each day deduct from your capital, if you begin to pour better oil upon your greens and your head, filthy ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace

... had got my telephone exchange buzzing. Sometime I'll explain the thing to you, for it's a pretty little business. I've got the cutest cypher ... No, it ain't my invention. It's your Government's. Any one, babe, imbecile, or dotard, can carry my messages—you saw some of them today—but it takes some mind to set the piece, and it takes a lot of figuring at my end to work out the results. Some day you shall hear it all, for I guess it ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan

... ragged flat-nosed old dotard, who walks about all day barefoot, and filches cloaks, and dissects gnats, and shoes (See Aristophanes; Nubes, 150.) fleas ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... longer a death-dealing terror. It has become a blubbering fish. And the author of its crimes is no diabolical triton, but a semi-imbecile old dotard, round whom his evil—but terrified—brood have clustered; they fawning on him in terror, he fondling them in shaky, decrepit fondness. Note the flaccid paunch, the withered top, and the foolish, hysterical face. How the full-dress cocked ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers

... philologer, philosopher, &c., in short he is everything and knows everything. When Nurredin orders him to begin his shaving he relates the fate of his six brothers, who all died before him and always of love. At last Nurredin's patience giving way, he calls his servants in to throw the old dotard out of doors. But Abul drives them all back and Nurredin tries to pacify him with flattery ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley

... that we may see which of us telleth the truth." Masrur said, "Come, let us go, that I may do to this ill-omened old woman evil deeds[FN76] and deal her a sound drubbing for her lying." And the duenna answered him, "O dotard, is thy wit like unto my wit? Indeed, thy wit is as the hen's wit." Masrur was incensed at her words and would have laid violent hands on her, but the Lady Zubaydah pushed him away from her and said to him, "Her truth-speaking ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton

... Jehane, "I have no choice. I must wed with this de Montfort. I think I shall die presently. I have prayed God that I may die before they bring me to the dotard's bed." ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell

... afternoon the inconsequent dotard had employed a telephone to summon his car to transport him to the links, and had denied even a glance of acknowledgment at the wonder floating above him. Much like that is growing Newbern. There was gasping aplenty when Winona Penniman abandoned ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson

... esteem it a mere accident that of a group of depreciatory and contemptuous words ending in 'ard', at least one half should have dropped out of use; I refer to that group of which 'dotard', 'laggard', 'braggard', now spelt 'braggart', 'sluggard', 'buzzard', 'bastard', 'wizard', may be taken as surviving specimens; 'blinkard' (Homilies), 'dizzard' (Burton), 'dullard' (Udal), 'musard' (Chaucer), 'trichard' (Political Songs), ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench

... dotard Ulfkytel not to see all this; would that you had slain me in the woods at first—or that he had hanged me at Caistor—or that I had been drowned. But justice is done, and my ...
— Wulfric the Weapon Thane • Charles W. Whistler

... unhealthy bird, scarcely possessing fat enough to cook himself; but, being rather doubtful of his own culinary efficiency, had consented to receive a French cook into the family: and, fearing there might yet be a deficiency, the ever-credulous old dotard was making good-natured overtures to one Joseph of Hapsburg,—never trustworthy, and always known to act as circumstances changed interests,—who said there was no knowing what time he would be ready to turn his attention to such purposes. Joseph, however, ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton

... protracted is protracted Woe. Time hovers o'er, impatient to destroy, And shuts up all the Passages of Joy: In vain their Gifts the bounteous Seasons pour, The Fruit Autumnal, and the Vernal Flow'r, With listless Eyes the Dotard views the Store, He views, and wonders that they please no more; Now pall the tastless Meats, and joyless Wines, And Luxury with Sighs her Slave resigns. Approach, ye Minstrels, try the soothing Strain, And yield the tuneful Lenitives of Pain: ...
— The Vanity of Human Wishes (1749) and Two Rambler papers (1750) • Samuel Johnson

... cursed The building of that fane; and many a father, Worn out with toil and slavery, implored The poor man's God to sweep it from the earth, And spare his children the detested task Of piling stone on stone, and poisoning The choicest days of life, To soothe a dotard's vanity. There an inhuman and uncultured race Howl'd hideous praises to their demon—God; They rushed to war, tore from the mother's womb The unborn child—old age and infancy Promiscuous perished; their victorious arms Left not a soul to breathe. Oh! they were fiends, ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley as a Philosopher and Reformer • Charles Sotheran

... that is what you are, monsieur!" she said, coming up to him and impudently snapping her fingers under his nose. "Such a fool this white-headed old dotard of a count, to think that he can take me in with a silly yarn about going to visit a nephew and bringing him back here to stay. Monsieur, you are a police spy. Well, good luck to you. Get what the ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew

... setting a proper example of neatness and decorum to her blooming daughter. Considerations of duty and responsibility apart, the change might have taken its rise in feelings of the purest and most disinterested charity. The gentleman next door had been vilified by Nicholas; rudely stigmatised as a dotard and an idiot; and for these attacks upon his understanding, Mrs Nickleby was, in some sort, accountable. She might have felt that it was the act of a good Christian to show by all means in her power, that the abused gentleman was neither the one nor the other. And what ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens

... chapter it is a melancholy picture that I have to present—the old age and death of Greek philosophy. The strong man of Aristotelism and Stoicism is sinking into the superannuated dotard; he is settling ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper

... a real ship, you old dotard!" said the skipper gruffly and looking angrily at him. "Of course it was," he added, while our new acquaintance looked at us, unable, naturally, to understand the mystical allusion; but Captain Applegarth soon turned his roving thoughts into another direction by asking him a second question. ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson

... dotard, with a senile chuckle, "that he was wrong. His answer was beyond my meaning—he muttered something about 'mutton and capa sauce.' I was engaged," continued the dotard, with a feeble grin, "as a capa for seventy ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, July 25, 1891 • Various

... "Peace, wriggling dotard!" hisses BUMSTEAD, jamming the umbrella tighter over him. "If they see us they'll want some of ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 18, July 30, 1870 • Various

... pleased him. But if, in the words of his wife, the lady had no claim to be called a lady, the marriage was deplorable. On the other hand, Lord Ormont spoke of her in terms of esteem, and he was no fondling dotard. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... that Metastasio is here," said the empress, "for his presence will prove to Calzabigi that he is not a pensioned dotard. And what thinks my daughter of the opera?" asked Maria Theresa of ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach

... was Roger Sherman, who had signed the articles of confederation, and was now trying to undo his own work. What confidence could be placed in a man who did not know his own mind any better than that? Then there were Hamilton and Madison, mere boys; and Franklin, an old dotard, a man in his second childhood. And as to Washington, he was doubtless a good soldier, but what did he know about politics? So said the more moderate of the malcontents, hesitating for the moment ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske

... temple of Pagan delights, and mysteries not permitted except among heathens. I fear the theatre carries down that ancient tradition and worship, as masons have carried their secret signs and rites from temple to temple. When the libertine hero carries off the beauty in the play, and the dotard is laughed to scorn for having the young wife: in the ballad, when the poet bid his mistress to gather roses while she may, and warns her that old Time is still a-flying: in the ballet, when honest Corydon courts Phillis under the treillage of the pasteboard cottage, and leers at her over ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray

... Trampling on freedom, left the alternative 175 Of slavery, or of death. Even from that day, When, on the guilty Capet, I pronounced The doom of injured France, has faction reared Her hated head amongst us. Roland preach'd Of mercy—the uxorious dotard Roland, 180 The woman-govern'd Roland durst aspire To govern France; and Petion talk'd of virtue, And Vergniaud's eloquence, like the honeyed tongue Of some soft Syren wooed us to destruction. We triumphed over these. On the same scaffold 185 Where the last Louis pour'd ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... "The Wandering Jew, thou dotard!" The wondrous phantom cried— "'Tis several centuries ago Since that poor stripling died. He would not use my nostrums— See, shaveling, here they are! These put to flight all human ills, These conquer death—unfailing pills, ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun

... Cavalcanti. "It is not. I am a dolt, a dotard; and I have been the cause of it. Then I shall pay ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini

... remains the fourth reason, which more than anything else appears to torment men of my age and keep them in a flutter—THE NEARNESS OF DEATH, which, it must be allowed, cannot be far from an old man. But what a poor dotard must he be who has not learnt in the course of so long a life that death is not a thing to be feared? Death, that is either to be totally disregarded, if it entirely extinguishes the soul, or is even to be desired, ...
— Treatises on Friendship and Old Age • Marcus Tullius Cicero

... Sir Frank de Dock, I have naught to say, save and excepting only that he be a caitiff and base-born dotard that did deride me and steal away unto his castle this very night when I did supplicate him to regale me with goodly viands around the board of that noble host, the gracious Sir Wralsy of Murdough. ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson

... collared him, and pitched him overboard. "Aha! The duck has a mind to drink. ... Over with you!—There is room for two now!" he shouted. "Quick, major! throw your little woman over, and come! Never mind that old dotard! he will ...
— Farewell • Honore de Balzac

... protracted is protracted woe. Time hovers o'er, impatient to destroy, And shuts up all the passages of joy: 260 In vain their gifts the bounteous seasons pour, The fruit autumnal, and the vernal flower; With listless eyes the dotard views the store— He views, and wonders that they please no more. Now pall the tasteless meats and joyless wines, And Luxury with sighs her slave resigns. Approach, ye minstrels! try the soothing strain, Diffuse the tuneful lenitives of pain: No sounds, alas! ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett

... blush to admit it, Methuselah was held in very trifling esteem by his frivolous fellow-citizens, who habitually referred to him as an "old 'wayback," "a barnacle," an "old fogy," a "mossback," or a "garrulous dotard," and with singular irreverence they took delight in twitting him upon his senility and in pestering him with divers new-fangled notions altogether distasteful, not to say shocking, to a gentleman of ...
— The Holy Cross and Other Tales • Eugene Field

... perjured prince[3] a leaden saint revere, A godless regent[4] tremble at a star? 90 The throne a bigot keep, a genius quit, Faithless through piety, and duped through wit? Europe a woman, child, or dotard rule, And just her ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope

... an aunt? Then learn the rules of woman's cant, And forge a tale, and swear you read it, Such as, save woman, none would credit Win o'er her confidante and pages By gold, for this a golden age is; And should it be her wayward fate, To be encumbered with a mate, A dull, old dotard should he be, That dulness claims ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton

... Who, little versed in moody wiles, is gone To lead him hither, was by him assigned My guide, and twice in doubtful fight his arm Protected me: once on the heights of Calpe, Once on the plain, when courtly jealousies Tore from the bravest and the best his due, And gave the dotard and the coward command: Then came Roderigo forth—the front of war Grew darker—him, equal in chivalry, Julian alone could ...
— Count Julian • Walter Savage Landor

... end the rancher promised to do this, but his tone was that of a broken and distraught dotard. All the landmarks of his life seemed suddenly shifted. All the standards of his life hitherto orderly and fixed were now confused and whirling, and Cavanagh, understanding something of his plight, pitied ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland

... man! never fleer and jest at me: I speak not like a dotard nor a fool, As, under privilege of age, to brag What I have done being young, or what would do, Were I not old. Know, Claudio, to thy head, Thou hast so wrong'd mine innocent child and me That I am forc'd to lay my reverence by, And, ...
— Much Ado About Nothing • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]

... authority resembled the avarice of the old usurer in the Fortunes of Nigel. It was so intense a passion that it supplied the place of talents, that it inspired even fatuity with cunning. "Have no money dealings with my father," says Marth to Lord Glenvarloch; "for, dotard as he is, he will make an ass of you." It was as dangerous to have any political connection with Newcastle as to buy and sell with old Trapbois. He was greedy after power with a greediness all his own. ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... of a ballad-maker; a tapster; a drunkard; a rectified young man; a young nouice's new yonger wife; a common fidler; a broker; a iouiall good fellow; a humourist; a malepart yong upstart; a scold; a good wife, and a selfe-conceited parcell-witty old dotard. ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle

... a beautiful wife, who died; but the mother, a decrepit old dotard, remained a fixture in his house, because of the dowry. He was teased to death by her company; but, from the circumstance of the dower, he had no remedy. In the meantime some of his friends having come to comfort him, one of them asked: "How is it with you, since the ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 2, Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous

... on a dotard's fears, Who much doth light detest; And let his last few drivelling years Be dark ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al

... get ye out of doors, and seek your Fortune. Stand still becalm'd, and let an aged Dotard, a hair-brain'd Puppy, and a Bookish Boy, that never knew a Blade above a Pen-knife, and how to cut his meat in Characters, cross my design, and take thine own Wench from thee, in mine own house ...
— The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher - Vol. 2 of 10: Introduction to The Elder Brother • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher

... to die, who would maintain your wife and daughter? The widow of a Marshal gets at least six thousand francs pension, doesn't she? Well, then, I wish to marry to secure bread for your wife and daughter—old dotard!" ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac

... likeness, but we must submit with a good grace to that which is out of our power to remedy. But I dare say the rascally groom is not after all so perfect a resemblance of your devoted admirer as the besotted gardener would make us believe; how could the old dotard distinguish objects so well, at the distance he confesses, and at night? It would seem more probable, by his prowling abroad at such an hour, that a free potation of wine had so far acted upon his senses, that he saw the marvellous story he has related, in a reverie whilst sleeping under ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio

... for a moment. "What! dearest," said he, "can you be affected by the foolish fears of yon dotard? How do we know as yet, whether this improbable story have any foundation in truth. At all events, it is evidently exaggerated. Perhaps an invasion of the poultry-yard, in which some hungry fox was the real ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton



Words linked to "Dotard" :   dote, old person, golden ager, oldster, senior citizen



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