Word of the Day

dotty [ˈdɒtɪ]adj -tier, -tiest

1. Slang chiefly Brit feeble-minded; slightly crazy

2. Brit slang (foll by about) extremely fond (of)

3. marked with dots

Use: She looked at the advertisement. 'Someone wants help with an old lady who has gone a bit dotty, I gather.'

I love the word dotty. When the definition says 'chiefly Brit' it might also say 'and used by Anglophiles and lovers of all things born before the Great War'.

The Founding Bettys do not have a history of family dottiness, per se--or rather, it isn't an undiagnosed old-age dementia. Those that were born dotty tend to stay that way. All the rest of us just start yelling at the television, chucking gardening implements at speeding motorists and canceling our newspapers. That's just the slightest shade short of charmingly dotty. One of our fellow Bettys had the nicest grandmother-in-law who had gone a bit dotty in her last years. I remember meeting her once and being asked, apropos of nothing, "Do you like tea? I like tea." That's charmingly dotty.