mandarin
Syllables: man·da·rinUK/ˈmæn.də.ɹɪn/
More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations
Singapore/ˈmæn.d(ə).ɹɪn/
mandarin noun: a high government bureaucrat of the Chinese Empire. Also the ellipsis of mandarin duck.
Noun (1)
mandarin (plural mandarins)
- A high government bureaucrat of the Chinese Empire.
- LIKE THE MANDARINS of old, the rulers of China live behind high walls. When they emerge, which they rarely do, they travel in cars with rear windows curtained like sedan chairs.
They live in the Chung Nan Hai, a walled park adjacent to the Forbidden City from where ancient dynasties ruled the...1991, Chris Mullin, The Year of the Fire Monkey (Fiction), London: Chatto & Windus, →ISBN, →OCLC, page 252
- LIKE THE MANDARINS of old, the rulers of China live behind high walls. When they emerge, which they rarely do, they travel in cars with rear windows curtained like sedan chairs.
- A pedantic or elitist bureaucrat.
- The mandarins who are managing this pandemic are fond of speaking of war.2020 April 3, Arundhati Roy, “The pandemic is a portal”, in Financial Times, London: The Financial Times Ltd., →ISSN, →OCLC
- A pedantic senior person of influence in academia or literary circles.
- Its sting preserved to literature a fierce peculiar genius [Waugh] who, in the 40 years before his death last week at 62, achieved recognition as the grand old mandarin of modern British prose and as a satirist whose skill at sticking pens in people rates him a roomy cell in the murderers’ row...1966 April 22, “The Beauty of His Malice”, in Time, archived from the original on 06 Nov 2012
- 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[.]2021 June 23, Peter S. Canellos, “Why The ‘Trump Court’ Won’t Be Like Trump”, in Politico
- A senior civil servant.
- A figurine of a Chinese person with movable head that was popular in the 1950s. (Cf. bobblehead.)
- He lay quietly in the hydropathic bed while his heart shuddered and his eyes focused at random on objects in the room, simulating a calm he could not feel. The walls of green jade, the nightlight in the porcelain mandarin whose head nodded interminably if you touched him, the multi-clock that...1953, Alfred Bester, The Demolished Man
Adjective
mandarin (comparative more mandarin, superlative most mandarin)
- Pertaining to or reminiscent of mandarins; deliberately superior or complex; esoteric, highbrow, obscurantist.
- A mandarin impassivity had descended over Smiley's face. The earlier emotion was quite gone.1979, John Le Carré, Smiley's People, Folio Society, published 2010, page 58
- [Anatole] Broyard's columns were suffused with both worldliness and high culture. Wry, mandarin, even self-amused at times, he wrote like a man about town, but one who just happened to have all of Western literature at his fingertips.1997, Henry Louis Gates Jr., “The Passing of Anatole Broyard”, in Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Black Man, New York: Random House, pages 180–181
Noun (2)
mandarin (plural mandarins)
- A small, sweet citrus fruit.
- A tree of the species Citrus reticulata.
- An orange colour.
Proper noun capitalized: Mandarin
Mandarin
- Standard Mandarin, an official language of China and Taiwan, and one of four official languages in Singapore; Putonghua, Guoyu or Huayu.
- [...]and though the ſame word hath one ſignification in the Mandorines Language, and a contrary in Japan and other places, yet knowing one Speech and their Character, you may Travel not only through the Empire of China, but the adjacent Kingdoms.[1669, John Nievhoff, “Athanasius Kircher Description of China”, in John Ogilby, transl., An Embassy from the Eaſt-India Company of the United Provinces, to the Grand Tartar Cham Emperour of China...
- Far fewer people understood Mandarin in Hotan than anywhere else I'd been in Xinjiang. It made getting around difficult, as not only did the taxi drivers fail to understand what I was saying, but they couldn't read an address either. Most ignored or didn't know the Chinese names given to the...2014, David Eimer, The Emperor Far Away: Travels at the Edge of China, Bloomsbury USA, →ISBN, page 75
- Synonyms:
- Beifanghua, Guanhua, Guoyu, Huayu, Mandarin Chinese, Putonghua, Standard Chinese, Standard Mandarin, Standard Spoken Chinese
- A branch of the Chinese languages, consisting of many dialects; Guanhua or Beifanghua.
- "Two, three, four, five, south! Six, seven, eight, nine, north!" Strange as it may sound, this is the way the people on the Chinese mainland complain about the lack of clothes, food and other necessities.
Absent from the phrases are "one" and "ten"—"i" and "shih" in Chinese Mandarin. The words for...1978 January 8, L. Chen, “What they say of Peiping rule”, in Free China Weekly, volume XIX, number 2, Taipei, page 3
- "Two, three, four, five, south! Six, seven, eight, nine, north!" Strange as it may sound, this is the way the people on the Chinese mainland complain about the lack of clothes, food and other necessities.
Also used as
mandarin is also the ellipsis of mandarin duck.
mandarin meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Marathi and Urdu
mandarin in Hindi
- मंदारिन, मैंडरिन, मैंडरीन
mandarin in Tamil
- மாண்டரின், மான்டரின்
mandarin in Marathi
- मंदारिन, मॅंडरीन, मंदारीन
mandarin in Urdu
- مینڈارن, مینڈرین, مینڈارین
More languagesFewer languages
- mandarin in Bengali
- ম্যান্ডারিন
- mandarin in Telugu
- మాండరిన్, మండరిన్, మందారిన్
- mandarin in Malayalam
- മാൻഡറിൻ, മാൻഡാരിൻ
- mandarin in Kannada
- ಮ್ಯಾಂಡರಿನ್, ಮಾಂಡರಿನ್, ಮ್ಯಾಂಡಾರಿನ್
- mandarin in Punjabi
- ਮੈਂਡਰਿਨ, ਮੈਂਡਰੀਨ, ਮੰਦਾਰਿਨ
- mandarin in Gujarati
- મેન્ડરિન, મેન્ડરીન, મેન્ડેરીન
- mandarin in Odia
- ମାଣ୍ଡାରିନ୍, ମାଣ୍ଡରିନ, ମାଣ୍ଡରିନ୍
- mandarin in Nepali
- म्यान्डारिन, मेन्डरिन, म्यान्डरीन
- mandarin in Malay
- menteri
- mandarin in Indonesian
- mandarin
- mandarin in Vietnamese
- quan
Examples of mandarin in a sentence
- Mandarin, Burmese, and Tibetan all belong to the Sino-Tibetan language family.
- Mandarin, Korean, and almost all of the Slavic languages are articleless.
- Mandarin ducks feed mainly on insects, snails, fish, plants and seeds.
Synonyms of mandarin
- Beifanghua
- Guanhua
- Guoyu
- Huayu
- Mandarin Chinese
- Putonghua
- Standard Chinese
- Standard Mandarin
- Standard Spoken Chinese
Forms of mandarin
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | mandarins |
| Adjective | |
| comparative | more mandarin |
| superlative | most mandarin |
Origin of mandarin
From Portuguese mandarim, mandarij, from Malay menteri, manteri, and its source, Sanskrit मन्त्रिन् (mantrin, “minister, councillor”), from मन्त्र (mantra, “counsel, maxim, mantra”) + -इन् (-in, an agent suffix).
From French mandarine, feminine of mandarin, probably formed as Etymology 1, above, from the yellow colour of the mandarins' costume.
Calque from Chinese 官話／官话 (Guānhuà, “spoken language of the mandarins”). An extension of mandarin (“bureaucrat of the Chinese Empire”) to the language used by the imperial court and sometimes by imperial officials elsewhere. As such, it was adopted as a synonym for Modern Standard Chinese in the 20th century. The term became ambiguous, however, as its use was extended to the various Northern dialects of Chinese.
Words formed from mandarin
Phrases with mandarin
Questions about mandarin
- What does mandarin mean?
- Mandarin means a high government bureaucrat of the Chinese Empire.
- What is mandarin in Hindi?
- Mandarin in Hindi is मंदारिन, मैंडरिन, मैंडरीन. See Mandarin meaning in Hindi.
- What part of speech is mandarin?
- Mandarin can be a noun, an adjective or a proper noun.
- How do you pronounce mandarin?
- Mandarin is pronounced /ˈmæn.də.ɹɪn/ (UK).
- What is the plural of mandarin?
- The plural of mandarin is mandarins.
Words near mandarin in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: mandarin (page history and authors); Mandarin (page history and authors); mandarin (Hindi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); mandarin (Tamil, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); mandarin (Marathi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); mandarin (Urdu, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); mandarin (Bengali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); mandarin (Telugu, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); mandarin (Malayalam, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); mandarin (Kannada, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); mandarin (Punjabi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); mandarin (Gujarati, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); mandarin (Odia, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); mandarin (Nepali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). 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:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-mandarin.ogg, en-au-mandarin.ogg.
Cite this entry: “mandarin.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/mandarin. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.