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admiral of the Swiss Navy

admiral of the Swiss Navy noun: one who appears important but is not.

Noun

admiral of the Swiss Navy (plural admirals of the Swiss Navy)

  1. One who appears important but is not.
    • When we sailed from San Francisco on the Snark I knew as much about sickness as the Admiral of the Swiss Navy knows about salt water.1911, Jack London, The Cruise of the Snark
    • When he came to the query, "What is your occupation?" the man of the cloth replied (facetiously, as he thought) , "Oh, I'm an admiral of the Swiss Navy."1948, Everett Francis Briggs, New Dawn in Japan, page 105

Examples of admiral of the Swiss Navy in a sentence

  • Portmann started as a marine biologist (as he remarked, that was rather like being admiral of the Swiss navy), and moved on to studies in comparative zoology.2002, Marjorie Glicksman Grene, Randall E. Auxier, Lewis Edwin Hahn, The philosophy of Marjorie Grene, page 80:
  • “Here comes the Admiral of the Swiss Navy,” remarked the portly, red-faced one, who then proceeded to laugh uproariously at his own wit.2012, John Lloyd Wright, My Father, Frank Lloyd Wright:
  • That's like being admiral of the Swiss Navy.”2012, Howie Carr -, Hard Knocks:

Forms of admiral of the Swiss Navy

pluraladmirals of the Swiss Navy

Origin of admiral of the Swiss Navy

From the fact that Switzerland is a landlocked country, so the Swiss Navy (although it does, in a sense, exist) is of little importance.

Questions about admiral of the Swiss Navy

What does admiral of the Swiss Navy mean?
Admiral of the Swiss Navy means one who appears important but is not.
How do you use admiral of the Swiss Navy in a sentence?
Portmann started as a marine biologist (as he remarked, that was rather like being admiral of the Swiss navy), and moved on to studies in comparative zoology.
What part of speech is admiral of the Swiss Navy?
Admiral of the Swiss Navy is a noun.
What is the plural of admiral of the Swiss Navy?
The plural of admiral of the Swiss Navy is admirals of the Swiss Navy.

Words near admiral of the Swiss Navy in the dictionary

  1. admirably
  2. admirail
  3. admiral
  4. admiral of the fleet
  5. Admiral of the Red
  6. admiral of the Swiss Navy
  7. admiral sauce
  8. admiral shell
  9. admiral shells
  10. admiral ship
  11. admiral ships

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: admiral of the Swiss Navy (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: “admiral of the Swiss Navy.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/admiral_of_the_swiss_navy. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.