I suggest we promote giving DJT a new name. Let's call him Dotard J. Trump. nt

[Binkie The Clown]

[VigilantG]

1. I second that motion!

Who would have thought Rocketman was so adept with our language!?

[logosoco]

2. Not the "J" part!!!!

Rant on:
I hate when people use the J in his name. When my son was born, we decided to give him the letter J as his middle name, because his father and both grandfathers had names that started with J. It confused the people when i filled out his birth certificate. I told them it was like Harry S Truman.
It also reminds me of other cool names, like Homer J. Simpson, Bullwinkle J. Moose and even Michael J. Fox.

So, while i like and agree with that old word dotard, please do not use the J!!!!

This is something that I complain about because my name is Laura, as in Laura Bush or Laura Ingraham or Dr. Laura Schlishger (whatever her name was!). It is bad enough that I have to live with that. I do not want the middle letter J to be high jacked by this miserable excuse for a human being who is in the POTUS office right now!

Rant over (as you can tell, that has been bubbling up in me for quite some time and i just had to get it out there!)

[SunSeeker]

3. Works for me!

Add that to the list of brilliant names people have called him: Shitler, Orange Shitgibbon, Twitter...

[Cracklin Charlie]

4. He will hate it!

It's perfect!

[luvMIdog]

5. I completely share your lack of respect for the orange creeper BUT...

I don't like the name 'Dotard'. It makes me cringe because I love retarded people. All of the retarded people I have ever met in my life were innocent , loving , and sweet- which is something Donald Trump could never aspire to be. Also, this type of morphing of the word 'retarded' is hurtful to parents and families that have retarded loved ones. I watched republicans thoughtlessly throw around 'libtard' until I wanted to spew. I was not impressed by their usage of it. Binkie I'm sorry to be a Debbie Downer on your thread, but retarded people are awesome and Donald Trump isn't.

I share your dislike though

[KY_EnviroGuy]

6. Asking in complete seriousness:

The way that word has always been perceived by many people, including myself, it seems to have a very negative, derogatory connotation, rather than being a proper descriptive of someone with a handicap or mental shortcoming. Are you saying that it's not hurtful to use it?

[luvMIdog]

7. yes you are very right no one says retarded anymore it's outdated

though back in the day retarded was considered the correct terminology. Now they say stuff like 'intellectual disability'. I usually just say 'special needs'. I used the word retarded in my post because of the words being used in politics these days being a derivative of the word retarded. So yes, to call a special needs person retarded is considered insulting. I did so in my previous post to illustrate the new nicknames as being taken from the word retarded. But honestly I think it bugs me most that a real disability would be somehow strangely linked with the creepers name.

Edited to add:
Well I guess I'm terribly in the wrong on this one. I just read this on another thread by hedda foil-
https://www.democraticunderground.com/10029623593
quote{The translator picked a word that's out in left field for nearly everyone who wasn't at least an English major. The phrase he was looking for was "senile old man. " Dotard goes back to when Shakespeare was in his dotage! } end quote.

My apologies to Binkie and everyone. I had no idea dotard was a real word I thought it was like 'libtard' - a made up word.

[Binkie The Clown]

10. Understandable. It's an archaic word.

As early as jr. high school in the 1950s I was a big fan of Charles Dickens, Jules Verne (20 Thousand Leagues..., Mysterious Island), Richard Henry Dana (Two Years Before the Mast), Herman Melville (Moby Dick), Robert Louis Stevenson (Treasure Island), C.S. Forester (the many novels about Captain Sir Horatio Hornblower), and many other sea-faring authors of the 19th century, so the word "dotard" has been a part of my normal vocabulary for as long as I can remember.

[KY_EnviroGuy]

12. Thanks, Binkie!

I now wish I had expanded my interest back them with more reading of classics, although my country school's library was limited. I took an early interest in science and technology and spend most of my time building crystal radios and tinkering.

Afterward, as an engineer, we were encouraged to not use unnecessary or "fancy" words, so that our writing could not be misinterpreted - perhaps causing a disaster. Further, most of my career's work involved interfacing with folks having high school education (at best), so I've always had to keep my dialog simple.

So now at 70 YO, I find myself still learning and using my dictionaries often. The positive result of these activities is that it helps stave off dementia!

[KY_EnviroGuy]

15. No need to apologize - we're all learning!

So many words in our language vary in context or usage, depending on the region we're from, customs of the populace, the classes and professions of people we're exposed to, etc. I had never heard the word dotard until this recent exposure.

Being raised in the middle-South (TN) in the 50s and 60s by depression era folks that only made it through the 8th grade, our language was kept quite basic. And, continuing my life as an engineer, that tradition was maintained for clarity and accuracy in communication. For me, there's nothing wrong or backward with operating our lives using simple, straight-forward dialog.

It does however, annoy me to no end when people distort or abuse common words in our language to insult opposing groups of folks, and then repeat those insults to the point to where those abused words loose their traditional meaning. The Republican-invented words "libertard" or "libtard" is probably the best example, along with their overall abuse of the word liberal. Thank goodness, most of that abusive banter is kept contained within their talk bubble. Our language will suffer no long-term harm.

I doubt if D. Trump is retarded in the classical sense, but instead conclude his intellect is probably no better than average. What astounds me is his very poor sentence structures and frequent incoherence. I can't fathom him being so isolated in his world of business that he developed that sort of backward, broken speech.

Thanks for pointing out that Kim Jong-Un really didn't use the word and that a translator sort of just pulled it out of the air - sending many Americans running for their dictionaries!

[Binkie The Clown]

8. "Dotard" does not mean "retarded". Objection noted, but I disagree.

There was a time many years ago when I took a break from my engineering profession for a couple years to pursue a graduate degree, and during that time I worked part time as a skills trainer with mentally disabled adults to help defray my college expenses. I remember that time with much affection for the people I worked with. I would not, under any circumstances, apply the word "dotard" to any of those wonderful people. The word "dotard", which refers specifically to "senility", and not "retardation", does, however, apply to Dotard J. Trump.

[luvMIdog]

9. I apologize . Please read my post above . Again I apologize

[Binkie The Clown]

11. :) It's all good. :) nt

[July]

14. Useful to know that it is also NOT pronounced the way "libtard" would be.

The emphasis in "dotard" is on the first syllable: DOH-terd, or sometimes DOH-derd when said by an American (vs. a Brit who would say the "t" clearly).

No emphasis on the "-tard," which is what the fools who use "libtard" are going for.

[JHB]

13. 'Dotard' goes back to the 14th century...

...to describe an old person with senility. In their dotage.

The use of 'retarded' as a euphemism for impairment or disability developed only 50-60 years ago to avoid other, older words that also had more academic origins but evolved into pejoratives, like 'moron' or 'imbecile'.


They're not actually related to each other.