Instead, you opt for the slightly bemused, dismissive approach of one commenting affectionately on the foibles and crankiness of a dotty old aunt.

"She's like a dotty old aunt who still collects albums."

Little Dove looks like a cross between an antiques store and the drawing room of a dotty old aunt, but it has a civilized charm and genuine character.

They're genuine eccentrics - droll, undaunted, opinionated, catty and rather odd - and as appealing as someone else's dotty aunts.

It gives us dotty aunts and dodgy spies, showbiz starlets and imperilled young firebrands.

This woman was a troubled sister, not a dotty aunt.

But at least she said it gently, in the sort of affectionate tone one would use to address a dotty aunt in her dotage.

Other people on line last month thought it was the real Ruth Messinger and treated her like a dotty old aunt.

If it's any of your business, I saved some and inherited a little from a dotty aunt.

The heroine, a spindly, middle-aged spinster, has spent her life attending to her dotty aunt and her bedridden father, little more than a vegetable with hair.