Word.ws English Dictionary

mandarinism

mandarinism noun: a government of mandarins; character or spirit of the mandarins.

Noun

mandarinism (countable and uncountable, plural mandarinisms)

  1. A government of mandarins; character or spirit of the mandarins.
    • It seems to me that it is these very governments of centralized mandarinism that play at providence, in which they closely resemble the communists, as indeed all absolutism contains a strong element of communism.1853, Francis Lieber, On Civil Liberty and Self-government

Forms of mandarinism

pluralmandarinisms

Origin of mandarinism

From mandarin + -ism.

Questions about mandarinism

What does mandarinism mean?
Mandarinism means a government of mandarins; character or spirit of the mandarins.
What part of speech is mandarinism?
Mandarinism is a noun.
What is the plural of mandarinism?
The plural of mandarinism is mandarinisms.

Words near mandarinism in the dictionary

  1. mandariness
  2. mandarinesses
  3. mandarinfish
  4. mandarinic
  5. mandarining
  6. mandarinism
  7. mandarinisms
  8. mandarinization
  9. mandarinize
  10. mandarinized
  11. mandarinizes

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: mandarinism (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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