Word.ws English Dictionary

dottrel

dottrel is the archaic form of dotterel.

Meaning of dotterel

Noun

dotterel (plural dotterels)

  1. A gullible fool, especially an elderly person with impaired faculties.
    • This poor dotterel, Sir Arthur, is playing fast and loose with me.1792, Thomas Holcroft, Anna St. Ives, vol. V, letter 88
    Synonyms:
    dotard
  2. A small brown-and-black bird of species Charadrius morinellus, of the plover family.
  3. (Australia, New Zealand) Any of various small birds of Australasia thought to resemble the Eurasian dotterel.

See all 4 meanings of dotterel

Forms of dottrel

pluraldottrels

Questions about dottrel

What is dottrel the archaic form of?
Dottrel is the archaic form of dotterel.

Words near dottrel in the dictionary

  1. dottlers
  2. dottles
  3. dottling
  4. Dotto train
  5. Dotto trains
  6. dottrel
  7. dottrels
  8. dotty
  9. dottyback
  10. dottybacks
  11. doty

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: dottrel (page history and authors); dotterel (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “dottrel.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/dottrel. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.