The leader of North Korea has introduced a lot of people to an interesting new word.
In response to Donald Trump’s UN General Assembly speech, in which the US president threatened to “totally destroy” the country, Kim Jong-un made a rare statement to call Trump a “mentally deranged dotard.”
The term got people scrambling for a dictionary to look up what the word could possibly mean.
Merriam-Webster, which has quite the reputation for being the sassiest dictionary on Twitter, defined the noun ‘dotard’ as “a state or period of senile decay marked by decline of mental poise and alertness.”
So yeah, it’s not a compliment.
Dictionary.com provided some alternative, yet equalling cutting, definitions: “A person, especially an old person, exhibiting a decline in mental faculties” or “a weak-minded or foolish old person”.
Oxford Dictionary’s definition also reads: “An old person, especially one who has become weak or senile”.
South Korean freelance journalist Jihyee Lee said the original statement in Korean used a term better translated as “old beast lunatic” but it became “dotard” in the English version released by North Korea.
When it comes to pronunciation of the word, fortunately it’s not quite as offensive as it sounds.
Both Merriam-Webster and Dictionary.com’s recordings of the word give the pronunciation do-terd. We’re saying nothing.
But the recognised definitions didn’t quite cut it for some people on Twitter, as many came up with their own creative examples of how the word could more accurately describe Trump.
Many also commented on how impressed they were by Kim Jong-un’s extensive vocabulary.
But were also annoyed that they’ve only just found out about the word themselves.
As well as mildly terrified that they’ve found themselves at the stage where they agree with the leader of North Korea on something.
Trump mocked Kim as a “rocket man” on a suicide mission in his UN speech, which was his most direct reference to military action so far against the North, which conducted its sixth and largest nuclear test on Sept. 3, reports Reuters.