DOTE

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IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does dote mean? 

• DOTE (verb)
  The verb DOTE has 2 senses:

1. be foolish or senile due to old age

2. shower with love; show excessive affection for

  Familiarity information: DOTE used as a verb is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• DOTE (verb)

Present simple: I / you / we / they dote    ... he / she / it dotes   
Past simple: doted   
Past participle: doted   
-ing form: doting   

Sense 1

Meaning:

Be foolish or senile due to old age

Classified under:

Verbs of being, having, spatial relations

Hypernyms (to "dote" is one way to...):

age; get on; maturate; mature; senesce (grow old or older)

Sentence frame:

Somebody ----s

Derivation:

dotard (an oldster in his dotage; someone whose age has impaired his intellect)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Shower with love; show excessive affection for

Classified under:

Verbs of feeling

Context example:

Grandmother dotes on the twins

Hypernyms (to "dote" is one way to...):

love (have a great affection or liking for)

Sentence frame:

Somebody ----s PP

 Context examples 

He doted on her boy—tenderly doted on him!

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

Sallie says they are very intimate now, and the old man quite dotes on them.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

You are so like your dear brother, continued Isabella, that I quite doted on you the first moment I saw you.

(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)

Your poor mother, too!—doting on Marianne.

(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)

There was a show of gratitude and worship in his attachment to my mother, differing wholly from the doting fondness of age, for it was inspired by reverence for her virtues and a desire to be the means of, in some degree, recompensing her for the sorrows she had endured, but which gave inexpressible grace to his behaviour to her.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

She doted on him.

(Persuasion, by Jane Austen)

The Admiral delighted in the boy, Mrs. Crawford doted on the girl; and it was the lady's death which now obliged her protegee, after some months' further trial at her uncle's house, to find another home.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

I am not at all polite, now, to the Misses Nettingalls' young ladies, and shouldn't dote on any of them, if they were twice as many and twenty times as beautiful.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

"I dote upon it. My sister, Meg, used to ride when Papa was rich, but we don't keep any horses now, except Ellen Tree," added Amy, laughing.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

Catherine followed her orders and turned away, but not too soon to hear her friend exclaim aloud to James, “What a sweet girl she is! I quite dote on her.”

(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)