dotage means decline in judgment and other cognitive functions, associated with aging; senility. Lexicurio rates it Sui generis — a strength score of 87 out of 100.
dotage is pronounced /ˈdoʊtɪd͡ʒ/.
Why “dotage” is a great word
DOTAGE — [Noun] A state of foolish decline, particularly the mental infirmity and fond folly of advanced age. From Middle English dotage, from doten ("to dote, to be foolish") + -age (suffix forming nouns of state or action). Unlike "senility," which clinically denotes the cognitive infirmity of old age, or "nonage," its direct opposite denoting legal minority, dotage carries the poignant stain of a fond irrationality. It is the old king fumbling with his toy soldiers while his kingdom collapses, the once-sharp scholar endlessly repeating a story of a long-dead lover, and the trembling hand that pours tea with a devotion both meticulous and misplaced—a quiet, unceremonious return to a state of bewildered dependence, where the heart's tenderness outlasts the mind's sharp edge.
noun
- Decline in judgment and other cognitive functions, associated with aging; senility.“"More care!" said the old man in a shrill voice, […] there were in his face marks of deep and anxious thought which convinced me that he could not be, as I had been at first inclined to suppose, in a state of dotage or imbecility.”
- Fondness or attentiveness, especially to an excessive degree.“Claudio And ſhe is exceeding wiſe.
Prince In euery thing but in louing Benedicke. […] I would ſhee had beſtowed this dotage on mee, […]”
- Foolish utterance(s); drivel.“No leſs are they out of the way in Philoſophy, peſtring their heads with the ſapleſs dotages of old Paris and Salamanca.”