grand poobah

/ɡɹænd ˈpuːbɑː/

grand poobah noun: a person who is important or high-ranking.

Image: Herbert Rose Barraud, Oxford Street, London, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun (1)

grand poobah (plural grand poobahs)

(colloquial, humorous, idiomatic, often) A person who is important or high-ranking.
- He once played golf with the grand poobah of their company.
(idiomatic, slang) An extremely pompous person.

Grand Poobah (plural Grand Poobahs)

Alternative letter-case form of grand poobah.
- Grand Poobah/Grand Imperial Poobah of the Loyal Order of Water Buffaloes Lodge No. 26.1960-1966, The Flintstones (cartoon)
- Grand Poobah of Leopard Lodge No. 462" in Milwaukee.1979, Happy Days (TV series)

From Pooh-Bah, the name of a character in Gilbert and Sullivan's comic opera The Mikado (1885).

What does grand poobah mean?: Grand poobah means a person who is important or high-ranking.
What part of speech is grand poobah?: Grand poobah is a noun.
How do you pronounce grand poobah?: Grand poobah is pronounced /ɡɹænd ˈpuːbɑː/.
What is the plural of grand poobah?: The plural of grand poobah is grand poobahs.

Adapted from Wiktionary: grand poobah (page history and authors); Grand Poobah (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.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-grand poobah.ogg.

Cite this entry: “grand poobah.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/grand_poobah. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.