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Article snippet: HONG KONG — When President Trump threatened to “totally destroy” North Korea and mocked its leader, Kim Jong-un, as “Rocket Man” in a speech on Tuesday at the United Nations General Assembly, the rhetorical retaliation from Pyongyang was inevitable. That Mr. Kim would call Mr. Trump a “mentally deranged U.S. dotard” on Friday was something more of a surprise. The word “dotard” in particular sent people to the dictionary to look up the arcane put-down. Merriam-Webster noted that “dotard” comes from “dotage,” a word meaning “a state or period of senile decay marked by decline of mental poise and alertness.” It rhymes with goatherd. The word has appeared on the pages of The New York Times just 10 times since 1980, always in the paper’s arts coverage. “A favorite theme of the medieval fabliau is the May-December tale of the dotard husband cuckolded by his young wife,” began one book review in 1986. The word makes a few appearances in Shakespeare. “I speak not like a dotard nor a fool,” Leonato says in “Much Ado About Nothing.” And Herman Melville used it in a poem about a shark. “Eyes and brains to the dotard lethargic and dull, Pale ravener of horrible meat.” The Korean word Mr. Kim used for “dotard” was “neukdari,” a common derogatory term for an old person. The connotation is someone who is lazy, useless and demented. Jean H. Lee, a former Pyongyang bureau chief for The Associated Press, said on Twitter that she had visited the offices of KCNA, the North Korean st... Link to the full article to read more