Mandarin

Quick meaning: Mandarin is a noun meaning A pedantic or elitist bureaucrat.

Meaning

A pedantic or elitist bureaucrat.

More Meanings

1. (sometimes derogatory) A pedantic senior person of influence in academia or literary circles.
2. (ornithology) Ellipsis of mandarin duck.
3. (informal, British) A senior civil servant.
4. A figurine of a Chinese person with movable head that was popular in the 1950s. (Cf. bobblehead.)
5. Pertaining to or reminiscent of mandarins; deliberately superior or complex; esoteric, highbrow, obscurantist.
6. Ellipsis of mandarin orange:
7. (historical) A high government bureaucrat of the Chinese Empire.

Example Sentences

A mandarin impassivity had descended over Smiley's face. The earlier emotion was quite gone.

When mandarins on the court pointed to obscure language in the Constitution to overturn a century of precedent and declare the income tax unconstitutional, Harlan sided with precedent[.]

Though alert to riddles' strong roots in vernacular narrative, Cook's tastes are mandarin, and she gives a loving account of Wallace Stevens's meditations on the life of poetic images and simile […].

When institutional mandarins such as this eminent pair set out to undermine the traditional basis for remunerating the products of the mind, you might expect a lowly scribe (such as your reviewer) to take umbrage.

Word Forms

• mandarins

Related Words

Related dictionary entries include putonghua, accent, air, wah, tangerine, satsuma.

Related Dictionary Tools