doddered, ppl. a.
(ˈdɒdəd)
[app. originally a deriv. of dod v.1 to poll or take the top off (a tree).
It is not clear whether it was a contaminated form of dodded ‘polled’, or a mistaken spelling of doddard n., ‘doddered oak’ for ‘doddard oak’ (cf. pollard willow); while the matter is complicated by the earlier use of dottard or dotard (see dotard 2) in the same sense. In later use there has been unintelligent association with dodder n., and perhaps with dodder v., and its cognates. It is doubtful whether senses 2 and 3 belong originally to this word.]
1. A word conventionally used (? after Dryden) as an attribute of old oaks (rarely other trees); app. originally meaning: Having lost the top or branches, esp. through age and decay; hence, remaining as a decayed stump. Johnson explained it as ‘Overgrown with dodder: covered with supercrescent plants’; and this explanation, which was manifestly erroneous, since neither dodder nor any plant like it grows upon trees, has been repeated in the dictionaries, and has influenced literary usage, in which there is often a vague notion of some kind of parasitical accretion accompanying or causing decay.
| 1697 Dryden Virg. Past. ix. 9 From the sloaping mountain to the Vale, And dodder'd Oak [veteres, jam fracta cacumina, fagos]. 1700 ― Pal. & Arc. iii. 905 The peasants were enjoined Sere-wood, and firs, and doddered oaks to find. 1725 Pope Odyss. xx. 200 The dodder'd oaks Divide, obedient to the forceful strokes. a 1748 Thomson (Ogilvie), Rots like a dodder'd Oak. 1813 Scott Rokeby vi. iii, He passes now the doddered oak, Ye heard the startled raven croak. 1850 H. Miller Footpr. Creat. x. (1874) 197 Doddered trunks of vast size, like those of Granton and Craigleith. 1853 C. Brontë Villette xii, Nasturtiums clustered beautifully about the doddered orchard giants. 1878 F. S. Williams Midl. Railw. 2 Doddered willows by the watercourses. 1880 Disraeli Endym. xxxiv, Sometimes they stood before the vast form of some doddered oak. |
b. as pa. pple. So ˈdoddering pres. pple., becoming doddered.
| 1697 Dryden æneid ii. 703 Near the hearth a laurel grew, Dodder'd with age [veterrima laurus]. 1766 Poetry in Ann. Reg. 235 The doddering oaks forewarn me of decay. |
2. dial. [Cf. dodder v.]
| 1847–78 Halliwell, Doddered, confused, shattered, infirm. 1876 Whitby Gloss., Dodder'd, shattered, dilapidated. |
3. Of persons: Decayed or impaired with age.
| 1893 Stevenson Catr. xv. 173 Auld feckless doddered men. |