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.