Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adjective Mentally unbalanced; crazy.
  • adjective Amusingly eccentric or unconventional.
  • adjective Ridiculous or absurd.
  • adjective Having a feeble or unsteady gait; shaky.
  • adjective Obsessively infatuated or enamored.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Of unsteady gait; feeble and tottering, as from stiffness or lameness: as, to be a little dotty on one's feet.
  • Feeble-minded; silly.
  • Having dots; covered or characterized by dots: as, a low, dotty underwood.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adjective Composed of, or characterized by, dots.
  • adjective engraving Unsteady in gait; hence, feeble; half-witted.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective Having many dots.
  • adjective UK Mildly insane or excessively preoccupied; often, senile.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • adjective informal or slang terms for mentally irregular
  • adjective intensely enthusiastic about or preoccupied with

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Probably alteration of Scots dottle, silly, from Middle English doten, to dote.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

dot +‎ -y

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Examples

  • Yes | No | Report from bustinbass wrote 32 weeks 5 days ago this still aint the biggest bass ever hooked and landed, even though it was foul hooked while sight fishin "dotty" the 25 pound largemouth bass in 2005 came from lake dixon in california. sadly it was found dead not too long ago floating in the lake still weighin an impressive 19 pounds

    Is This The New World-Record Largemouth? 2009

  • Yes | No | Report from bustinbass wrote 32 weeks 5 days ago this still aint the biggest bass ever hooked and landed, even though it was foul hooked while sight fishin "dotty" the 25 pound largemouth bass in 2005 came from lake dixon in california. sadly it was found dead not too long ago floating in the lake still weighin an impressive 19 pounds

    Is This The New World-Record Largemouth? 2009

  • She said it might be time to rethink the "dotty" system.

    Labour conference live – Sunday 26 September Andrew Sparrow 2010

  • She said it might be time to rethink the "dotty" system.

    Labour conference live – Sunday 26 September Andrew Sparrow 2010

  • In the run-up to the election he described plans for an arbitration scheme to judge banks when they refuse lending to small businesses as "dotty" and politically motivated.

    Richard Lambert steps down early as CBI director general 2010

  • Re whether it's "dotty" to think that this story will affect votes -- I think that people who write blogs tend to overestimate their effect in elections to roughly the same extent that people who don't write blogs underestimate their effect.

    <a href="http://althouse.blogspot.com/2007/02/i-just-want-to-say-this-right-now-that.html" title="I just want to say this right now that regardless of what they say about it, we're gonna keep them. Ann Althouse 2007

  • Murtha couldn't really do anything about it even as Majority Leader, and he sounds kind of dotty, even if he's right.

    No further Murtha. Ann Althouse 2006

  • Now the book is drawn in a kind of dotty pen-and-ink style that seemingly bears equal thanks to both Peter Sis and Paul O.

    Archive 2006-07-01 fusenumber8 2006

  • Murtha couldn't really do anything about it even as Majority Leader, and he sounds kind of dotty, even if he's right.

    No further Murtha. Ann Althouse 2006

  • The talk was lively enough, -- about two new cases that had arrived that afternoon, the deer-hunting season that had just closed, bear tracks discovered on Bolton Hill near the lumber-camp, and a new piano that a friend had sent for the convalescent or "dotty" ward, as they called it.

    Together Robert Herrick 1903

Comments

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  • -- Who is he if it's a fair question, Mrs Breen asked. Is he dotty?

    Joyce, Ulysses, 8

    January 3, 2007