Word.ws English Dictionary

Lord Privy Seal

Lord Privy Seal proper noun: the fifth of the Great Officers of State in the United Kingdom, now used as a sinecure or title for a minister without portfolio.

Proper noun

Lord Privy Seal

  1. (UK) The fifth of the Great Officers of State in the United Kingdom, now used as a sinecure or title for a minister without portfolio.

Adjective

Lord Privy Seal (comparative more Lord Privy Seal, superlative most Lord Privy Seal)

  1. (UK, humorous) Of images, that match words too closely or in an overly literal manner.
    • Not bad, but it's a bit Lord Privy Seal.
    • Now only people in their late fifties (and there aren't many of us left at the BBC) even remember it; yet a few years ago I heard a young editor and a youngish reporter discussing whether a picture sequence was 'too Lord Privy Seal': that is, too literal and obvious.2009 September 30, John Simpson, News from No Man's Land: Reporting the World, Pan Macmillan, →ISBN, page 115

Synonyms of Lord Privy Seal

Forms of Lord Privy Seal

comparativemore Lord Privy Seal
superlativemost Lord Privy Seal

Origin of Lord Privy Seal

From a sketch on the 1966-67 British satire show The Frost Report, poking fun at the television broadcasting practice of displaying images on screen to accompany spoken monologues. In the sketch, the words Lord Privy Seal in a news report are illustrated with a photo of a lord, photo of a privy (outhouse), and photo of a seal (pinniped) balancing a ball on its nose.

Questions about Lord Privy Seal

What does Lord Privy Seal mean?
Lord Privy Seal means the fifth of the Great Officers of State in the United Kingdom, now used as a sinecure or title for a minister without portfolio.
What part of speech is Lord Privy Seal?
Lord Privy Seal can be a proper noun or an adjective.

Words near Lord Privy Seal in the dictionary

  1. lord of the rings
  2. Lord only knows
  3. lord over
  4. lord paramount
  5. Lord President of the Council
  6. Lord Privy Seal
  7. lord protector
  8. Lord Provost
  9. Lord Provosts
  10. Lord rest his soul
  11. Lord Spiritual

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Lord Privy Seal (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: “Lord Privy Seal.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/lord_privy_seal. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.