second childhood

American  

noun

1. senility; dotage.

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second childhood British  

noun

1. dotage; senility (esp in the phrases in his, her, etc, second childhood )

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second childhood Idioms  

1. The dotage of old age; also, childlike playfulness in an adult. For example, Grandpa needs full-time care, now that he's in his second childhood, or Since he retired and started learning to fly, he's been in his second childhood. Depending on the context, this term may allude either to such problems of old age as losing one's mental or physical capacities or to delighting in new pleasures in a childlike fashion. [c. 1900]

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Etymology

Origin of second childhood

First recorded in 1900–05

Example Sentences

This is why it was called a second childhood.

From New York Times • Oct. 6, 2016

Greene, capturing the second childhood sweetness and mischievousness of Nagg, and Rae, making the most of Nell’s senescent sensuality, are as touching as they are hilarious as Hamm’s bottled up progenitors.

From Los Angeles Times • May 3, 2016

As with that other great 21st-century franchise The Lord of the Rings, the filming took a long time and served as a kind of second childhood for its cast and crew.

From The Guardian • Oct. 25, 2015

Warhol in the ’60s, looking back to a decade earlier—when he started to become well-known, to make and be able to spend money—may have begun, in effect, to live his second childhood.

From Slate • Jul. 4, 2012

I was going through a second childhood; a new sense of the limit of the possible was being born in me.

From "Black Boy" by Richard Wright

Related Words

• infirmity