How to Use senile in a Sentence

senile

adjective
  • Her mother is becoming senile.
  • The kids can’t spell and the world leaders are senile.
    — Literary Hub, 21 Oct. 2025
  • The protein clusters outside the cells are called senile plaques.
    — Maria Carolina Gallego-Iradi and David Borchelt, Discover Magazine, 15 Nov. 2017
  • And that claim involved an old, half-senile legislative back-bencher.
    — Joseph Gerth, The Courier-Journal, 3 Nov. 2017
  • They are being given directions by a senile old man who is losing his mind.
    — Voice Of The People, New York Daily News, 22 Mar. 2026
  • The song paints the president as a senile granny trying to make it into heaven.
    — Gil Kaufman, Billboard, 13 Oct. 2017
  • The senile Soviet leaders who lined up on the top of the mausoleum were the butt of jokes.
    — The Economist, 20 Dec. 2017
  • Dotard an old person, especially one who has become weak or senile.
    — Stephen A. Crockett Jr., The Root, 22 Sep. 2017
  • Also, our senile president should be the one suspended from twitter.
    — Karen Mizoguchi, PEOPLE.com, 13 Oct. 2017
  • The cause was senile degeneration of the brain, said a son, Peter Siebentritt.
    — Benjamin Gordon, Washington Post, 25 Aug. 2019
  • The cause was senile degeneration of the brain, said a daughter, Katherine Shorey Herold.
    — Washington Post, 16 Apr. 2018
  • The issue is about more than just the heightened risk of a sudden death tilting the balance of power, or a senile leader making important decisions.
    — Charlotte Alter, Time, 21 Oct. 2021
  • The old senile Brits and the uneducated young were those who voted to leave, and those who were intelligent voted to remain.
    — Tunku Varadarajan, WSJ, 6 July 2018
  • Billy Chapman is again introduced as a child (Logan Sawyer) visiting his senile grandpa in a rest home.
    — Dennis Harvey, Variety, 11 Dec. 2025
  • North Korea responded angrily on Thursday by threatening to call Trump a senile dotard.
    — Simon Denyer, Washington Post, 5 Dec. 2019
  • The right's efforts to paint the 79-year-old as senile and unable to meet the demands of his office have been largely successful, certainly among Republicans.
    — Frida Ghitis, CNN, 5 Aug. 2022
  • While struggling to find the right English, Conte described the 54-year-old as 'demenza senile', which translates to senile dementia.
    — SI.com, 6 Jan. 2018
  • As a woman struggling to communicate with her senile father, Colman wears exasperation and sorrow on her face without losing her composure.
    — Michael Schulman, The New Yorker, 15 Apr. 2021
  • After two hundred and forty-six years, the country shows several typical signs of old age, from creaky public transit to a downright senile forgetfulness about the status of bodily autonomy as a right.
    — River Clegg, The New Yorker, 6 Sep. 2022
  • Decrepit, senile, and miserable, Tithonus eventually shrank into a cicada who stridulated ceaselessly, calling out for release.
    — Tad Friend, The New Yorker, 24 Mar. 2017
  • The game is highly anticipated after the recent war of words between Mourinho and Antonio Conte, which saw the Blues boss label his counterpart 'senile'.
    — SI.com, 25 Feb. 2018
  • Unfortunately for Bill, his son Andrew (Monk actor Jason Gray-Stanford) is afraid his father is going senile and is in danger of being catfished.
    — Sabienna Bowman, PEOPLE, 30 Jan. 2026
  • Cherry angiomas are sometimes referred to as senile angiomas—that's because they are commonly associated with getting older, usually popping up after age 30, per Mount Sinai.
    — Sarah Fielding, Health, 9 Mar. 2023
  • His older brother, played by Paul Wesley, has died under mysterious circumstances, forcing Ethan to return home to contend with that grief, with the stark fact of his senile mother, and with the resentments of former friends who view his departure as a betrayal.
    — Richard Lawson, HollywoodReporter, 18 Mar. 2026

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'senile.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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