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Dotage vs Effete - What's the difference?

dotage | effete |

As a noun dotage

is decline in judgment and other cognitive functions, associated with aging; senility.

As an adjective effete is

(label) of substances, quantities etc: exhausted, spent, worn-out.

dotage

English

Noun

(en noun)
  • Decline in judgment and other cognitive functions, associated with aging; senility.
  • * 1841 , , The Old Curiosity Shop , ch. 1,
    • "More care!" said the old man. . . . There were in his face marks of deep and anxious thought which convinced me that he could not be, as I had been at first inclined to suppose, in a state of dotage or imbecility.
  • Fondness or attentiveness, especially to an excessive degree.
  • * 1598 , , Much Ado About Nothing , act 2, sc. 3,
    • CLAUDIO: And she is exceeding wise.
    DON PEDRO: In every thing but in loving Benedick. . . . I would she had bestowed this dotage on me.
  • foolish utterance; drivel
    • The sapless dotages of old Paris and Salamanca. — Milton.

    Synonyms

    * (loss of mental acuity associated with aging) second childhood

    Anagrams

    * *

    effete

    English

    Alternative forms

    *

    Adjective

    (en adjective)
  • (label) Of substances, quantities etc: exhausted, spent, worn-out.
  • *, II.4.1.v:
    • Nature is not effœte , as he saith, or so lavish, to bestow all her gifts upon an age, but hath reserved some for posterity, to shew her power, that she is still the same, and not old or consumed.
  • Of people: lacking strength or vitality; feeble, powerless, impotent.
  • *
    • Amid the effete monarchies and princedoms of feudal Europe, morally and materially exhausted by the Thirty Years' War, the only hope of resistance to France lay in the little Republic of merchants, Holland.
  • Decadent, weak through self-indulgence.
  • Effeminate.
  • *
    • a good-humored, effete boy brought up by maiden aunts.

    Derived terms

    * effetely * effeteness