mandarine

Noun (1)

mandarin (plural mandarins)

1. (historical) 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
2. 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
3. (derogatory, sometimes) 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
4. (UK, informal) A senior civil servant.
5. 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

Noun (2)

mandarin (plural mandarins)

1. A small, sweet citrus fruit.

See all 11 meanings of mandarin