doddering

1. not comparableMentally or physically infirm due to old age; senile.

   Treat the doddering old fool with sympathy.

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

   2 more examples

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

   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

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

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

1. gerundparticiplepresentpresent participle and gerund of dodder

plural dodderings

1. A shaking or trembling movement, as of old age.

   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.

   2001, Seth Kohn, Escape on the Silk Road, page 7