Re: First Editions, I hope. Wonderful TARS moment


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Posted by John Nichols on September 19, 2005 at 19:44:22 from 24.250.155.253 user Mcneacail.

In Reply to: Re: First Editions, I hope. Wonderful TARS moment posted by Mike Dennis on September 19, 2005 at 18:50:32:

Dotty: from the OED.

(dt) [f. DOT n.1 + -Y1.]

1. Consisting of or characterized by dots; dot-like.

1879
1812


1812 Examiner 30 Nov. 763/2 That dotty softness, which confers so..natural a character on the flesh. 1879 STEVENSON Trav. Cevennes 80 A low dotty underwood that grew thickly in the gorges.
2. Of unsteady, uneven or feeble gait, as from stiffness or lameness. Hence fig., feeble in mind, silly. colloq. or dial.

14.. 1896
1888
1885
1884
1870 1971
1948
1936


14.. in J. Glyde New Suffolk Garland (1866) 213 Ale mak many a mane to have a doty poll. 1870 Sportsman 9 Apr. (Farmer), He begins to go a little stiff in his limbs and dotty on his feet. 1884 Daily Tel. 9 Apr. 2/6 (ibid.) He [a race-horse] pulled up in a dotty condition. 1885 Standard 13 Mar. 6/6, I am not mad, drunk, or dotty. 1888 E. LAWS Hist. Little England 420/1 Dotty, silly from age; senile. 1896 Evesham Jrnl. 28 Nov. (E.D.D.), The Council hardly knows if he has not gone ‘dotty’. 1936 BENTLEY & ALLEN Trent's Own Case vii. 73 The Englishman looked sick and a bit dotty. 1948 R. LEHMANN Note in Music (ed. 2) IV. 130 Quite wrapped up in herselfwith something pretty rum staring out of her eyes. A bit dotty, perhaps. 1971 Sunday Times 16 May 32/8 Taya Zinkin, with a kind of dotty inevitability, ends as an authority on India.
Hence dottily adv., in a ‘dotty’, mad, or eccentric manner; absurdly, crazily; dottiness, (a) unsteadiness of gait; (b) (colloq.) eccentricity, feeble-mindedness, craziness.

1888 1984
1978
1969
1959
1934
1934


1888 Matlock Visiting List 29 Aug. 3/3 An amount of dottiness like the lurching of a landsman on a rolling steamer. 1934 WEBSTER, Dottily. 1934 WODEHOUSE Thank You, Jeeves xii. 162 Dotty, beyond a question. And who knew but what that dottiness might not run in the family? 1959 P. BULL I know the Face viii. 135, I was in the witness-box or court throughout and was drugged to the point of dottiness. 1969 Dottily [see HONEYISH a.]. 1978 Economist 4 Feb. 14/1 The cardinal hesitates... He is looking over his shoulder at his conservative fellow bishops in the Catholic hierarchy, for whom dottily enough he is not the spokesman. 1984 Financial Times 5 June 19/5 The fable of the Little Mermaid provides a symbolic leitmotiv that recurs from the opening scene when Mette's dottily genteel mother..recalls the mortal prince loved by a sea-creature.




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