senility

1. 1.

   mental infirmity as a consequence of old age; sometimes shown by foolish infatuations

   Synonymsdotagesecond childhood

   Broaderold age
2. 2.

   the state of being senile

   Broaderoldness

Other forms of senility

plural

senilities·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about senility

What does senility mean?

senility means "mental infirmity as a consequence of old age; sometimes shown by foolish infatuations". That is the primary sense; the word has 2 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in senility?

senility has 4 syllables: se-nil-i-ty. The stress falls on "nil". In IPA it is /səˈnɪləti/.

What is another word for senility?

Close synonyms include dotage, second childhood. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is senility a common word?

senility is banded "Uncommon" — turns up in careful writing rather than conversation. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.