Word.ws English Dictionary

mandarinates

mandarinates is the plural of mandarinate.

Meaning of mandarinate

Noun

mandarinate (plural mandarinates)

  1. (obsolete) The status of holding a position as a mandarin.
  2. The collective body of mandarins.
    • As higher education, claiming more and more years of one’s life, widens the space between those who possess it and those who do not, and as the enlightenment of the public wanes relatively to the superior enlightenment of the learned castes and professions, the mandarinate will infallibly draw to...1901, Edward Alsworth Ross, Social Control: A Survey of the Foundations of Order, page 88
  3. A political form of rule by mandarins.
  4. (figuratively) A type of government marked by excessive bureaucracy and Byzantine regulations.
    • Far from being a model of democracy, the EU is associated with an arrogant, out-of-touch mandarinate that issues rules and edicts with paternalistic and highhanded disregard for ordinary citizens.2011, Ian Buruma, Europe without Turkey

Questions about mandarinates

What is mandarinates the plural of?
Mandarinates is the plural of mandarinate.

Words near mandarinates in the dictionary

  1. mandarin oranges
  2. mandarin square
  3. mandarin squares
  4. mandarinal
  5. mandarinate
  6. mandarinates
  7. mandarindom
  8. mandarine
  9. mandarines
  10. mandariness
  11. mandarinesses

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: mandarinates (page history and authors); mandarinate (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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