Kim makes the word ‘dotard’ great again
WASHINGTON— In the latest war of words between the United States and North Korea, Kim Jong Un did not pull any punches. But he may have pulled out an old dictionary.
“I will surely and definitely tame the deranged U.S. dotard with fire,” he declared in an unusually direct and angry statement published Thursday by North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency.
The North Korean leader’s warning about “fire,” which echoed President Donald Trump’s August statement threatening “fire and fury,” was par for the course in their increasingly tense relationship. On Thursday, Trump announced new financial sanctions to further isolate the country as its nuclear and ballistic missile capabilities escalate.
But Kim’s use of “dotard” was what raised eyebrows, prompting people around the world to Google the old-time insult. Merriam-Webster defines the noun as “a person in his or her dotage,” which is “a state or period of senile decay marked by decline of mental poise and alertness.”
The Canadian Oxford Dictionary’s succinct definition: “a senile person.” The word trended on Twitter and searches for the term were “high as a kite” following the release of Kim’s statement, Merriam-Webster noted.
The word meant “imbecile” when it was first used in the 14th century and comes from the Middle English word “doten,” meaning “to dote,” according to Merriam-Webster.
According to Google’s Ngram Viewer, which can search for words printed between 1500 and 2008, use of “dotard” spiked in Shakespeare’s time, then surged again in the 1800s. Now, thanks to Kim, “dotard” is back. Kim used the insult not once but twice in his statement, which was a response to Trump’s address Tuesday to the UN General Assembly, in which the U.S. president called Kim “Rocket Man” and threatened to “totally destroy North Korea.”
Here is the first time Kim uses the term: “Action is the best option in treating the dotard who, hard of hearing, is uttering only what he wants to say.”
The Korean version reads differently, instead calling Trump a “lunatic old man,” according to Washington Post bureau chief Anna Fifield.
The term has actually been used before in reference to Trump. In May, writing in Esquire, Charles P. Pierce described the president as “a blundering dotard.”
On Thursday, Pierce tweeted: “I would like to thank Kim for bringing ‘dotard’ back.”