dotardly

comparative more dotardly · superlative most dotardly

1. Like a dotard; foolish and weak.

   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.

   2015, Peter Dickinson, One Foot in the Grave

   2 more examples

   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.

   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

   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?

   1848, The Millennial Harbinger, volume 5, page 307