dote

[doht]

verb (used without object)

doted, doting 

1. to bestow or express excessive love or fondness habitually (usually followed by on orupon ).

   They dote on their youngest daughter.

2. to show a decline of mental faculties, especially associated with old age.

noun

1. decay of wood.

dote

/ dəʊt /

verb

1. to love to an excessive or foolish degree

2. to be foolish or weak-minded, esp as a result of old age

Other Word Forms

• doter noun

Word History and Origins

Origin of dote¹

1175–1225; Middle English doten “to behave foolishly, become feeble-minded”; cognate with Middle Dutch doten

Word History and Origins

Origin of dote¹

C13: related to Middle Dutch doten to be silly, Norwegian dudra to shake

Example Sentences

Luckily for Penelope, back on land Captain Strøm was the doting father to a houseful of tall, strong-limbed daughters, and it was not in his great Nordic heart to toss her overboard.

Read more on Literature

Mostly, they dote on the kids, and cousins reconnect.

Read more on Los Angeles Times

Victorian audiences were repelled by Henrik Ibsen’s fatally attractive newlywed who appears to have it all — the fancy house, the doting husband — only to be violently bored.

Read more on Los Angeles Times

He was born in 1936 in Sacramento, Calif. His father was a well-respected local lawyer, and his doting mother had been an assistant in the state Senate.

Read more on The Wall Street Journal

Known to the children as “aunty” or “grandma,” Johnson would treat them to dips in the pool at the Raffles and doted on them at the center.

Read more on The Wall Street Journal

Related Words

• cherish