War of words

Whoever translates Kim Jong-un’s insults into English evidently has a penchant for some especially archaic terms. The North Korean dictator’s regime has once again described President Trump as a “dotard”, a word that is not commonly bandied about any longer in the West, not even by those adept at reaching for the most pejorative epithets.

A dotard is a weak and senile old man, someone in his dotage. The original Korean apparently translates literally as “an old beast lunatic”. But dotard is so much better.

For his part, Mr Trump called Kim short and fat; but surely he can improve on that. What about abdominous, rotund, porcine or Falstaffian? Who knows how those words might translate into Korean?