Word: dotard
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...stomach and intestines; in the ovaries and testicles. These hormones always work together. The pattern of their complicated interbalance makes every human being precisely what he is. The balance changes during life, making the baby a boy, the boy a youth, the youth a man, the man a dotard. Disease or accident, food or medicine may alter the balance. Then one may be smarter or duller than natural, thinner or fatter, more brave or more backward. A woman with an overactive thyroid is a busybody with a quick pulse, a temperature slightly above normal. She wants to wolf all kinds...
...diversion was to throw a blacksmith's hammer weighing 17 lbs., after which he refreshed himself from a runlet of ale holding two gallons. Like others before him, however, he became a prey to strong drink and died, like Gilbert's precocious baby, "an enfeebled old dotard at five." Intellectual precocity though less rare is more interesting. Child wonders have actually performed mental feats which most adults could never hope to achieve. Eminent among them are Baratier, whose life was written by Dr. Johnson...