panjandrum

Noun

panjandrum (plural panjandrums or panjandra)

1. An important, powerful or influential person; muckamuck.
   • So he died, / and she very imprudently married the Barber: / and there were present / the Picninnies, / and the Joblillies, / and the Garyulies, / and the grand Panjandrum himself, / with the little round button at top;1755, Samuel Foote, The Grand Panjandrum (a nonsense poem written to test actor Charles Macklin's claim that he could accurately recite any paragraph of text after a single reading)
   • I think it's an excellent thing that the Great Panjandrum is coming for the week-end. Have you ever met him in private?"
   • I ought to explain that the Great Panjandrum was the nickname for Lord Elkindale, the then Foreign Secretary.1910, Eliakim Littell, Making of America Project, Robert S. Littell, Living age ... (Littell's Living Age), Volume 265, page 809

   Synonyms:

   baron, big cheese, big enchilada, big gun, big kahuna, big man, big name, big noise, big shot, bigwig

2. A self-important or pretentious person.
   • You can never imagine how delighted I was to find that instead of being the correct sort of big panjandrum you were supposed to be, you were really an old rip like papa.1910, George Bernard Shaw, Misalliance
3. (historical) A massive, rocket-propelled, explosive-laden cart designed by the British military during World War II.
   • The Panjandrum lurched and overturned, the crash dislodging several of the rockets, which flew low over the beach in all directions […].1967, John Winton, The War At Sea, 1939-1945: An Anthology of Personal Experience, page 304
   • The idea was that the Panjandrum, a kind of explosion-driven Ferris wheel, would be set rotating and then released into shallow water to roll up onto enemy beaches.2003, Neil A. Downie, chapter 14, in Ink Sandwiches, Electric Worms, and 37 Other Experiments for Saturday Science, →ISBN, page 115